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GOIDSMITH'S 
THE DESERTED VILLAGE 




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GRAY'S 
GY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 




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GOLDSMITH'S 
THE DESERTED VILLAGE 




GRAY'S 

ELEGY IN A COUNTRY 

CHURCHYARD 




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Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

BY 

LOUISE POUND, Ph.D. 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 





GINN AND COMPANY 

boston • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



.A^Tb 



Copyright, 1907, 1909 
By LOUISE POUND 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



99.12 



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GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The text of this edition of The Deserted Village and of the 
Elegy in a Country Churchyard is in each case that of the latest 
revised edition published during the lifetime of the author. Alter- 
ations have been limited to a few modernizations in spelling and 
capitalization, and to some minor changes, necessary for consist- 
ency in a school edition, in the punctuation. The aim in the 
various parts of the Introduction has been to give in condensed 
form some idea of contemporary conditions, literary and other- 
wise, as well as some account of the life and works of the authors. 
A new feature that will add, it is believed, to the convenience 
for school use of this edition of The Deserted Village is the inclu- 
sion in an appendix of two passages usually read in connection 
with the poem ; namely, the sketch of the poor parson from 
Chaucer's Prologue to The Ca7iterbury Tales, and Dryden's 
" Character of a Good Parson " from his Tales from Chaucer. 

Obligation to preceding editions of poems so often edited as 
The Deserted Village and the Elegy in a Country Churchyard is 
a matter of course, and the present editor takes this opportunity 
to make grateful acknowledgment. Specific instances of indebt- 
edness are recorded in the Notes. ^ _^,^^^. t^^tt^ti^ 

louise pound 

University of Nebraska 
Lincoln 



m 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction to The Deserted Village ix 

Dedication xxvii 

The Deserted Village i 

Introduction to the Elegy in a Country Churchyard 17 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard * . . 27 

Notes on The Deserted Village 35 

Notes on the Elegy in a Country Churchyard . . 47 

Appendix 53 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 



INTRODUCTION TO THE 
DESERTED VILLAGE 

The Times 

Political Events and History. The chief political events of 
the years of the eighteenth century in which Goldsmith lived 
and wrote need little comment. The House of Hanover was 
newly on the English throne, George H becoming king in 
1727, and George HI in 1760. The policies of the nation were 
determined largely by her statesmen, notably Robert Walpole, 
prime minister from 1721 till 1742, and William Pitt, who 
became prime minister in 1757. Walpole's policy was to keep 
peace abroad and to conciliate party and religious differences 
at home, that the new line of kings might be firmly established 
and the internal resources of the country be developed. His 
methods involved much bribery and corruption, in reaction 
against which a new spirit of patriotism was awakened by Pitt ; 
but under his peaceful guidance the country grew in mate- 
rial wealth as never before. Toward the end of the reign of 
George H, and in the reign of George IH, came more stirring 
events, and there was still greater national expansion. A vast 
colonial trade was built up, and commerce and the wealth based 
upon it became of more and more importance. By the victory of 
Lord Clive in 1757, firmly estabhshing the British power in 
India, and by the capture of Quebec from the French in the 
same year, establishing British power in Canada, England gained 
complete control of the vast domains of India and North 
America, and took the place as a world power which she has 
since retained among the nations. Under George HI the 
country was less contented than under his predecessor. The 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

borrowing of vast sums of money to carry on her wars increased 
the national debt of England to alarming proportions, and in 
many ways public affairs were mismanaged. 

Industrial England. The Deserted Village is in unusual de- 
gree the product of the age in which it was written, especially 
of contemporary industrial conditions. The marked growth in 
commerce, during the eighteenth century, had made it the 
serious rival of agriculture. Manufacturing also was growing 
rapidly, the two constituting what Goldsmith calls " trade." 
The so-called industrial revolution, consequent upon the in- 
vention of new machinery, the utilization of steam and water 
power, and improved methods of transportation and communi- 
cation, was beginning, although it was to come mainly after 
Goldsmith's day. The year 1770, when the poem was wTitten, 
was a period of strong depression with regard to the national 
future. England was thought to be on the verge of bankruptcy, 
because of the vast proportions of the national debt ; the fre- 
quent emigration, really a sign of growing population, was 
thought ominous ; and in particular the country was errone- 
ously believed to be depopulating. Arthur Young, the traveler, 
wrote in this same year : 

It is asserted by those writers who affect to run down our affairs, 
that, rich as we are, our population has suffered ; that we have lost 
a million and a half people since the Revolution ; and that we are 
at present declining in numbers.^ 

Another characteristic feature of the time was the inclosure 
of the old public lands.^ Innumerable inclosure acts were 
passed by Parliament between 1 760 and 1774 ; and though the 
inclosure system was beneficial in the long run, the change 
caused at the time much suffering. Working classes that had 

1 Tour of the North of England, Letter XL. 

2 Gibbins, Ifidustry in England, 274, 335. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

pastured their cattle on the old common fields lost their privilege 
when the land was inclosed. Many who had been small farmers 
were forced to become laborers on the lands of others, to go 
to factory towns, or to emigrate. Thus a large class of small 
farmers disappeared. The historian Lecky, citing a contem- 
porary document in proof, writes that " whole villages which 
had depended on free pasture land and fuel dwindled and 
perished, and a stream of emigrants passed to America." ^ 
Others think the conditions sketched in Goldsmith's poem 
less typical ; but there was undoubtedly much suffering. , 

Literary Conditions. Goldsmith lived and wrote in the tran- 
sitional period linking the age of Pope, generally called the 
classical age, with the romantic reaction to be ushered in 
by Burns, Cowper, and Wordsworth. Literary historians often 
call this period the " Age of Dr. Johnson," from Goldsmith's 
friend, Samuel Johnson, the dictionary maker and essayist, who 
was its literary lawgiver. The social and intellectual ideas of 
the time were on the whole much the same as in the age pre- 
ceding, that is, critical rather than creative, showing respect 
for convention, the centering of interest on form, and the 
exaltation of " reason " and " common sense " at the expense 
of individuality and spontaneity. It was not an especially pro- 
ductive period for letters. Among prose writers Goldsmith's 
leading contemporaries were Dr. Johnson, Gibbon the historian, 
Burke the orator and essayist, and Sheridan the dramatist. In 
poetry were Collins, Gray, Young, and Chatterton ; thus the 
showing was even slenderer for poetry than for prose. 

Professional writers of this period were likely to encounter 
many hardships, and much in their lot was sordid and unenviable. 
They were breaking away from the patronage system previously 
prevailing, and were now dependent on booksellers, the better 
modern system of allowing authors a percentage of the profits 

1 History of Englanditi the Eighteenth Century (1903), VII, 260. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

on their books being not yet evolved. In the Restoration 
period literature had been close to politics. The author was 
dependent, not on the sale of his books to a bookseller, or to 
the public, but on the munificence of some patron. He sought 
to attach himself to some distinguished man or to some party. 
Dryden, Swift, Addison, and Steele all had patronage bestowed 
upon them in return for some pohtical service. In the time of 
Dr. Johnson, men of letters became less subservient to patrons 
or to parties ; hence they could be freer and more sincere ; 
but prices were low and uncertain, and an income that was de- 
rived from literary drudgery, hack writing on assigned themes 
regardless of equipment, was likely to be as precarious as it 
was hard-earned. 

Oliver Goldsmith 

Early Years. Oliver Goldsmith was born November to, 
1728, in the small village of Pallas, County Longford, Ireland, 
the fifth child and second son in a family of eight. The Gold- 
smiths were of English descent, but the family had been for 
some generations settled in Ireland. The Reverend Charles 
Goldsmith, Oliver's father, was a humble Protestant curate, 
whose income averaged forty pounds a year, a not unusual 
revenue in that period for a country parson. When Oliver was 
two years old his father succeeded to a more lucrative living at 
Lissoy, County Westmeath, almost in the geographical center 
of Ireland, and here the future poet passed the larger part of 
his boyhood. Oliver was awkward and unattractive as a child, 
nor did his physical appearance improve with years. He was 
short, thickset, and ugly, and his face was permanently dis- 
figured, with more than the usual severity, by an attack of the 
smallpox in his eighth year. He was not a precocious child. 
His youth gave signs enough of the thoughtless generosity, the 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

good nature, and the improvidence that were always to char- 
acterize him, but gave few or no signs of his Hterary genius. 
For the former traits his father was perhaps in part respon- 
sible. In A Citizen of the World, much of which is autobio- 
graphical, Goldsmith writes, presumably of his bringing up by 
his father : 

We were told that universal benevolence was what first 
cemented society ; we were taught to consider all the wants of 
mankind as our own ... he wound us up to be mere machines of 
pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest im- 
pulse, made either by real or fictitious distress. In a word, we were 
perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands before we 
were taught the necessary qualifications of getting a farthing.^ 

Goldsmith has pictured some of his own or his father's traits 
in the character of Dr. Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield, in 
Honeywood in The Good-Natured Man, and in the preacher 
in The Deserted Village. 

Goldsmith as a Student. Goldsmith's school career was 
throughout undistinguished. He was taught his letters by a 
maidservant and relative, who pronounced him very stupid. 
At the age of six he was sent to the village school, where his 
master was an ex-soldier, Thomas or " Paddy " Byrne, the 
original of the schoolmaster in The Deserted Village. He stud- 
ied under several later masters in schools at Elphin, Athlone, 
and elsewhere, leaving apparently a record for little more than 
dullness and awkwardness. His college career was similarly 
inglorious. Owing to his father's crippling the means of the 
family to provide Goldsmith's sister with an extravagant mar- 
riage portion, Oliver entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the 
age of seventeen, as a sizar, passing the necessary entrance 
examination the lowest in the list. The sizar was part stu- 
dent, part servant, and as such Goldsmith waited at table and 

1 Letter XXVII. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

performed janitor service. He tided over money difficulties in 
various ways, — by the generosity of a kind-hearted maternal 
uncle, Thomas Contarine, his chief support after the death of 
his father, by loans from friends, by pawning his books, and by 
the occasional writing of street ballads, which brought him five 
shillings apiece. His life in college was a hand-to-mouth sort 
of existence, marked by various frolics and gayeties as well as 
by numerous humiliations. He was popular with his associates, 
partly because of his flute playing and his singing, and partly 
because of his lively disposition and his ability to tell stories ; 
but he quarreled constantly with a rather brutal tutor, took part 
in a town-and-gown riot and was publicly reprimanded, and 
once when giving a dancing party attended by not a little 
hilarity in his college rooms he was surprised in the breach of 
discipline by an angry tutor and was " personally chastised." 
The latter disgrace was too much for Goldsmith, and the next 
day he sold his books and ran away, ultimately turning up at 
Lissoy. He was taken back to college by his brother Henry, 
and succeeded in securing his degree of Bachelor of Arts, 
graduating, as he had entered, the lowest in the list. 

Attempts at Various Professions. For two years after leav- 
ing college Goldsmith loitered at home, ostensibly fitting him- 
self, at the request of his relatives, for church orders. He 
lived an idle, irresponsible life, happy and thriftless ; and 
when he finally presented himself for ordination was rejected, 
perhaps because of his record at college, perhaps because he 
neglected his preliminary studies, or perhaps, as the curate 
who was his brother's successor near Lissoy reports, because 
he presented himself for examination in a pair of flaming scar- 
let breeches. For a while he tried tutoring ; then came a futile 
attempt to emigrate to America. If we may believe the ac- 
count Goldsmith wrote to his mother, the ship on which he 
had engaged passage from Cork sailed without him, while he was 



INTRODUCTION XV 

pleasure-seeking in the neighboring country. There was 
nothing for him to do but to turn up again at Lissoy with 
empty pockets. 

The legal profession was next determined upon, and Gold- 
smith was provided by his uncle with fifty pounds to take him 
to Dublin or London to study law. This money he lost on the 
way at gambling. Goldsmith was hard to help ; but his long- 
tried relatives again got together a purse, and he was sent to 
Edinburgh to study medicine, this time reaching his destina- 
tion. He proved popular as usual with his associates, through 
his various gifts at entertaining. A few evidences remain from 
this period of the lavishness in dress which was one of his 
peculiarities. There is a tailor's bilP Df 1753 containing ref- 
erences to *' rich sky-blue satin cloth," "rich Genoa velvet," 
" fine high claret-coloured cloth," etc., suggesting his strong 
love of finery. He made little progress in medicine, however, 
and, becoming restless, succeeded in persuading his uncle that 
he would be benefited by study under a certain great professor 
at Leyden. He crossed to the Continent in 1754, after obtain- 
ing from his indulgent uncle the sum of twenty pounds. 

Wanderings. Goldsmith lingered for some time in Leyden ; 
then impulsively spending the last of his money to buy some 
high-priced roots for his Uncle Contarine, who was an enthusi- 
astic florist, he left the city, almost penniless, to make a tour 
of Europe. For two years he roved through France, Switzer- 
land, Germany, and Italy, ostensibly studying medicine, but 
probably doing very little. Possibly he studied a few months 
at the University of Padua ; but he seems to have been more 
vagabond than student. He was often, of course, in straits for 
money, depending for subsistence on teaching his native lan- 
guage, on gaming, but generally on his flute and songs, which 
brought him welcome from the peasantry. In Italy he is 
1 Printed in full in Forster's Life (1877), I, 52. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

supposed, like the wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, to 
have disputed on questions of philosophy at universities and 
convents for his lodging. In The Vicar of Wakefield the 
''philosophic vagabond," who stands probably for Goldsmith 
himself, is made to say the following : 

I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice ; I now 
turned what was once my amusement into a present means of sub- 
sistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and 
among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry ; 
for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. 
Whenever I approached a peasant's house toward nightfall, I 
played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not 
only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day. I once or twice 
attempted to play for people of fashion, but they always thought 
my performance odious, and never rewarded me even with a trifle.^ 

Goldsmith turned his steps homeward in 1756, arriving in 
London utterly without money, but with a medical degree, 
picked up we are not sure how or where, possibly at Louvain 
in Belgium. The record of part of his European rovings is 
preserved in The Traveller. 

Makeshifts. On his return Goldsmith attempted various 
things with little success, and often found himself sorely pressed. 
In making his way to London he tried, it is thought, the life of a 
strolling player. His first definite employment was as a chemist's 
assistant ; then he bought a second-hand velvet coat, and gained 
a little practice as a physician in the Southwark district, across 
the Thames from London. Rumor says that he acted for a 
short time as proof corrector for Samuel Richardson, the nov- 
elist and printer. It is certain that he was twice usher, an occu- 
pation which he extremely disliked, in an academy at Peckham, 
once for a few months in 1756 and again in 1757 or 1758. 
Through Dr. Milner, the master, he made the acquaintance, in 

1 Chapter XX. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

lis first stay at Peckham, of Griffiths, the bookseller and editor 
)f 21ie Mofithly Review^ and soon entered into an agreement 
vith him to furnish copy of all kinds, especially reviews, for 
:he latter's periodical. The agreement did not last very long, 
nainly because Goldsmith objected to having his work " edited " 
)y the bookseller and his wife ; and he went back for a time 
:o Peckham, seeking meanwhile a chance to escape from the 
Irudgery of teaching or of literary hack work. He seems in 
[758 to have built high hopes on obtaining the post of physi- 
:ian and surgeon on the coast of Coromandel in British India ; 
)ut the project came to nothing, perhaps for the same reason 
hat he did not, in that year, secure the position of hospital 
nate, — namely, that he was found "not qualified." 

Literary Work. The engagement to write for The Monthly 
Review was for Goldsmith the beginning of his literary career. 
Tis work for Griffiths he followed by various critical articles 
or a rival publication. The Critical Review, edited by the 
lovelist Smollett. He first won recognition by his Enquiry 
nto the Present State of Polite Learning, published in 1759, 
L pretentious but gracefully written survey, for which he had 
lardly sufficient equipment. After this his life was given up 
o the drudgery of executing taskwork for various London 
mbhshers, the production of his masterpieces at intervals 
)reaking the routine. He started The Bee, a periodical in the 
^ein of Addison and Steele's The Spectator, in 1759, wrote for 
The Busybody, a similar publication, edited The Ladies'* Mag- 
izine, and contributed his Chinese Letters, published in 1762 
mder the title of A Citizen of the World, to The Public Ledger. 
n the way of biographical taskwork he wrote Memoirs of Vol- 
aire (1761), The LJfe of Richard Nash (1762), The Life of 
rho7nas Parnell (1770), and The Life of Lord Bolingbroke 
1770). His historical writing, all of it compilation but popu- 
arly written and entertaining, comprised a LListory of England 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

(1763), a Roman History (1769), and a Grecian History 
(1773). He wrote also a pleasing if not very scientific History 
of Animated Nature^ published after his death. Goldsmith's 
best works are the poems, The Traveller (1764) and The 
Deserted Village (1770), his novel The Vicar of Wakefield 
(1766), and the plays The Good-Natiired Man (1768) and 
She Stoops to Conquer (1773), the latter being his last impor- 
tant work. 

Goldsmith the Man. Goldsmith made a good deal of money 
by his literary work ; indeed, it is calculated that his average 
income was about two thousand dollars yearly ; yet extravagance 
was part of his nature, and he was very lax in money matters. 
He always spent more than he earned, hence he was always in 
debt. The production of The Good-Natured Man brought him 
in about two thousand dollars, most of which was promptly spent 
on furnishing fine new chambers and on clothes. An anecdote, 
not wholly trustworthy, of Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson and the 
sale of The Vicar of Wakefield is so characteristic as to be worth 
repeating as Dr. Johnson tells it, in his biographer's pages : 

I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith . . . , beg- 
ging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a 
guinea . . . went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his land- 
lady had arrested him for rent, at which he was in a violent passion. 
I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got 
a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into 
the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of 
the means by which he might be extricated. He then told that he 
had a novel ready for the press. ... I looked into it, and saw its 
merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and having gone 
to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the 
money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady 
in a high tone for having used him so ill.^ 

1 Boswell's Zz/^, Chapter XIII. But see Dobson's Goldsmith, Chapter VII. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

For all that his personality was so full of faults, Goldsmith 
was very lovable, and with few authors has the English world 
felt so strong a sense of companionship. His unworldliness 
and guilelessness, his blundering simple goodness, even his 
vanity, are part of his charm. Few men have had warmer 
hearts, stronger feelings of sympathy and charity, or more 
impulsive if inconsiderate generosity. Many anecdotes are pre- 
served testifying to his kindness of heart. A relative and 
fellow-student tells that when Goldsmith was at college he gave 
at one time the blankets off his bed to a poor woman who told 
him a tale of starvation and of five crying children, and him- 
self crept into the ticking of his mattress for shelter from the 
cold. His literary prominence later in life brought him a host 
of parasites and hangers-on, who practiced on his credulity 
and his benevolence. His expenses would have outstripped his 
income had he earned twice as much as he did, or lived 
twice as long. One of his most marked extravagances was for 
dress ; he loved to trick out his homely person with finery ; 
but he spent much to relieve the poor and miserable. It was 
one of his redeeming traits that much of his prodigality was 
not lavished on himself. 

Among his friends Goldsmith counted some of the most 
illustrious men of the age. He was taken into exclusive literary 
circles, being one of the members who formed the famous 
Literary Club. He met Dr. Johnson, the literary autocrat of 
the day, in 1761, and the latter proved a good friend to him. 
Other members of the club were Boswell, Johnson's biographer, 
David Garrick the actor, Edmund Burke the orator, and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds the painter. Goldsmith seems hardly to have 
held his own in the wit combats of the club, especially, if we 
may believe Boswell, with Johnson. '' Poor Goldy," as he was 
called, did not shine in conversation, needing the additional time 
which the pen gave him, but he was always a general favorite. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

Goldsmith died of a fever in 1774, owing two thousand 
pounds, a big bill at the tailor's among the others. " Was 
ever," said Dr. Johnson, "a poet so trusted before?" 

Place in Eighteenth Century Literature. If not perhaps the 
greatest, Goldsmith is one of the most pleasing and versatile 
writers of his century. He did hack work enough to drown 
the inspiration of most men ; yet he stood high as an essayist, 
he wrote a novel of the prose-pastoral sort which has remained 
a classic, two of the most pleasing poems, and two of the 
most entertaining comedies of the age. In spite of the con- 
servative influence of Dr. Johnson, he showed, in many re- 
spects, strong romantic tendencies. We. should not look to 
him for work that is profound or penetrative ; his education 
was too desultory, and his lack of exact learning too marked; 
nor could he succeed when he went beyond his own personal 
experiences. He was not a deep thinker, nor had he very 
strong originality or high imagination. Yet he was more origi- 
nal than any one else of his group dared to be ; he was among 
the first to make domestic life interesting in a novel or a play ; 
and, unlike most of his contemporaries, he showed a feeling 
human element, even in his satires. In his own place he stands 
secure. His work is always readable. He writes with a fas- 
tidious choice of words, if he has not wide command of them, 
and without a trace of effort. Part of his charm lies in the 
style, which is clear, animated, and charmingly familiar, and 
part in the gentle pathos and humanity of his work, of which 
more will be said later. On the whole, considering the eminent 
place which he takes as a poet, a prose writer, and a dramatist, 
he stands perhaps as the representative man of letters of the 
eighteenth century. Both Pope and Johnson were more domi- 
nating figures, and had wider influence, but neither was so 
representative in range. 



INTRODUCTION xxj 

The Deserted Village 

Composition and Publication. Some account of Goldsmith's 
manner of writing verse has been left to us by a contemporary, 
a young law student and friend named Cook. Goldsmith wrote 
verse slowly, according to Cook, " not from the tardiness of 
fancy, but the time he took in pointing the sentiment, and pol- 
ishing the versification." Of the composition of The Deserted 
Village in particular we are told the following : 

... he first sketched a part of his design in prose, in which he 
threw out his ideas as they occurred to him ; he then sat down 
carefully to versify them, correct them, and add such other ideas 
as he thought better fitted to the subject; and if sometimes he 
would exceed his prose design by writing several verses impromptu, 
these he would take singular pains afterwards to revise, lest they 
should be found unconnected with his main design. Ten lines, 
from the fifth to the fifteenth, had been his second morning's work ; 
and when Cook entered his chamber he read them to him aloud. . . . 
" Come," he added, "let me tell you this is no bad morning's work." i 

The date of this visit was May, 1768, exactly two years 
before the poem appeared. Thus the whole process of its 
composition and revision would seem to have extended over 
two years. 

The Deserted Village wdiS published May 26, 1770, in quarto 
form. " This day at twelve," announced The Public Advertiser 
of that date, "will be published, price two shilhngs, The 
Deserted Village, a Poem. By Dr. Goldsmith. Printed for 
W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head in Catherine Street, Strand." 
The poem met with immediate success. Five editions were 
published during the year, most of them containing careful 
revisions : a second June 7, a third June 14, a fourth June 28, 

1 Eiiropean Magazine^ 1793- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

and a fifth August i6. What Goldsmith was paid for the poem 
by the bookseller who published it is not known. The sum 
was probably small, however; compare 1. 414 of his apos- 
trophe to poetry at the close of The Deserted Village; also 
his words to Lord Lisbum, " I cannot afford to court the 
draggle-tail muses, my Lord, they would let me starve ; but 
by my other labors I can make shift to eat, drink, and have 
good clothes." ^ 

Goldsmith's Purpose in the Poem. The germ of The Deserted 
Village is to be found in 11. 397-412 of The Traveller^ written 
a number of years earlier. Many of its leading ideas are to 
be found here and there in the essays printed in The Citize?i 
of the World. As made clear by his introductory dedication, 
Goldsmith intended The Deserted Village to be an elegy over 
the decay of the peasantry, and an invective against the increase 
of luxury/N He held that undue national opulence brings na- 
tional corruption and national decay. In some of his economic 
theories the poet is not to be followed. There was no real 
depopulation of the country going on, as he and many others 
believed ; rather was the contrary true ; and, had there been 
such depopulation, it would have been erroneous to ascribe it 
to the increase of material prosperity, really a healthful sign, 
accompanying the rapid national expansion. In other respects 
Goldsmith is better borne out by the economic history of the 
time ; for example, when he deplores the accumulation of 
land under one owner as inimical to the small farmer, or 
pictures the breaking up of homes consequent upon the inclos- 
ure of the commons, and the distress of the evicted wanderers. 
A number of such evictions he himself witnessed. The result 
was not, however, unless in isolated cases, the wholesale emi- 
gration of the evicted, and in several features Goldsmith's 
picture is probably overcolored. 

1 Forster's Life, II, 209. 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

Auburn and Lissoy. In many respects Goldsmith draws on 
memories of his early life for his poem/ and for this reason 
Auburn and Lissoy were early identified by critics. Lord 
Macaulay, on the other hand, took the ground that Auburn is 
an inconsistent village, assuredly not to be identified too closely 
with Lissoy or with any other spot. Goldsmith confuses, 
Macaulay says, the rural life of two countries, blending his 
Irish recollections and his English experiences ; the village in 
its prosperity and happiness is English, in its unhappiness and 
desolation Irish. It seems now that the poet's picture of Auburn 
in its decline is probably truer and more English than Macaulay 
admits,^ although allowances are to be made for exaggeration, 
especially of contrast. Goldsmith undoubtedly makes use both 
of his early recollections of Lissoy and of his English observa- 
tions ; but he exaggerates or idealizes to suit his general pur- 
pose, and to point his moral, and very definite localizing should 
not be attempted. 

Form. The verse form of Goldsmith's poem is the heroic 
couplet, consisting of two iambic pentameter lines linked by 
rhyme, which in the eighteenth century was the ruling poetic 
form. Gray departed from the couplet form in his Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard, printed in 1750, as had Thomson ear- 
lier ; and Wordsworth and Coleridge were soon to complete the 
overthrow of its sovereignty, at least as written in the manner of 
Pope. Goldsmith was more conservative, and adhered to the 
classical tradition. In the handling of Chaucer, in the four- 
teenth century, with whom the verse form first appears, the 
thought is allowed to run on from line to line or from couplet 
to couplet, stopping somewhere within the line if the author 
wish ; and such was the handling of the Elizabethans, or of 

1 Cf. notes on 11. 12, 37, 131, 196, and others. 

2 Lecky's -/^/j/^ry of England in the Eighteenth Century (1903), VII, 
260. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

nineteenth century poets like Keats and Browning. With Pope, 
the autocrat of the classical school, the handling was more 
inflexible, and his couplets and Chaucer's would hardly be 
recognized as written in the same form. Pope's verse exhibits 
almost invariably end-stopped couplets and unit lines, and he 
composed with a point and finish, with a correctness and with 
a concise and lucid phraseology that for a long time were held 
to be standard-giving. In Goldsmith's day emancipation was 
in the air ; but Dr. Johnson was a firm classicist, his own verse 
being exclusively in Pope's manner, and Goldsmith was too 
good a disciple to dream of departing from the conservative 
vein of the artificial-conventional school. Yet in a compari- 
son of the couplets of Goldsmith and Pope some differences 
may be noted. Goldsmith's lines are not less elaborated and 
conventional, and his diction makes no nearer approach to 
the fresh or the individual. Yet the glitter and point of Pope's 
work is more subdued with Goldsmith; and with the latter the 
paragraph, not the couplet, is the unit. Goldsmith's lines show, 
unlike Pope's, the influence of blank verse. It is, however, in 
the spirit of the poem, in the personal touches and descriptive 
passages, rather than in the form, that The Deserted Village is 
transitional, foreboding the departure of didactic poetry and 
the coming of another and freer school. 

Popularity of the Poem. At the time when it was written 
the moralizing tone of Goldsmith's poem no doubt assisted its 
popularity. The fashion of the age tended towards sentimental 
reflection; note poems like Young's Night Thoughts (1742- 
1744), Akenside's The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744), 
Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Gray's Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard (1750), and many others. The con- 
trast between the luxury of the rich and the innocent and 
simple pleasures of country folk is a theme which may still be 
counted upon to enlist the sympathies ; moreover the subject 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

fitted Goldsmith personally, and his experience equipped him 
admirably to handle it. Others of his generation would probably 
have made the poem purely didactic, a sort of homily on the 
dangers of increasing wealth ; but he chose to handle his ma- 
terial in a simpler and more personal way, anticipating the next 
generation of poets in his humanitarianism and in his return 
to the expression of genuine feeling, if he did not anticipate 
them in verse form. He is most perfunctory in the didactic 
passages, most natural in the feeling passages. The majority 
of readers soon forget the moralizing purpose of the poem and 
its economic theme, and remember it only as a picture of a 
village in its prosperity and in its desolation. Goldsmith cared 
much for simple rustic life, — he had himself been close to it ; 
and the poem as he wrote it springs from sincere interest and 
genuine sorrow. It is not the finish of the couplets or the 
didactic tone that gives The Deserted Village its permanent 
significance and accounts for the place which it has won in the 
popular heart ; rather are these derived from the grace and the 
tender feeling of the poem as a whole, the convincing humanity 
of its characterizations, and its sympathetic descriptions of vil- 
lage life and village scenes. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Biographies of Goldsmith have been written by Prior (1837), 
Forster (1849), Washington Irving (1849), WilHam Black, 
English Men of Letters Series (1878), and Austin Dobson, 
Great Writers Series (1888). 

For essays on Goldsmith, see those by Macaulay, Miscella7ie- 
ous Essays, or in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Thackeray in 
English Hiiifiorists, De Quincey in The Eighteenth Century 
Scholarship and Literature, and Leigh Hunt in his Classic 
Tales. 

For the general conditions and life of the period, consult Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson, Dobson 's Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 
Traill's Social Englaiid, Vol. V, Gibbins's Ltidustry in England 
or Warner's Landmarks in English Industrial History, and 
Lecky's History of E?igla7id in the Eighteetith Century, An 
account of the London of Goldsmith's day is given in Besant's 
London in the Eighteenth Century. 

Goldsmith is the hero of the novel. The Jessamy Bride, by 
F. Frankfort Moore. 



XXVI 



DEDICATION 

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

Dear Sir, — I can have no expectations, in an address of 
this kind, either to add to your reputation, or to estabHsh my 
own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am 
ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel ; and I may 
lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a 
juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest, therefore, 
aside, to which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged 
at present in following my affections. The only dedication I 
ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than 
most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe 
this poem to you. 

How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere 
mechanical parts of this attempt, I do not pretend to inquire ; 
but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and 
wisest friends concur in the opinion), that the depopulation it 
deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments 
are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I 
can scarce make any other answer than that I sincerely believe 
what I have written ; that I have taken all possible pains, in my 
country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be cer- 
tain of what I allege ; and that all my views and inquiries have 
led me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt to 
display. But this is not the place to enter into an inquiry 
whether the country be depopulating or not ; the discussion 

xxvii 



xxviii DEDICATION 

would take up much room, and I should prove myself, at best, 
an indifferent politician to tire the reader with a long preface 
when I want his unfatigued a,ttention to a long poem. 

In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh 
against the increase of our luxuries ; and here I also expect the 
shout of modern poHticians against me. For twenty or thirty 
years past it has been the" fashion to consider luxury as one of 
the greatest national advantages ; and all the wisdom of antiq- 
uity, in that particular, as erroneous. Still, however, I must 
remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think 
those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so many vices are 
introduced and so many kingdoms have been undone. Indeed, 
so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the 
question, that merely for the sake of novelty and variety, one 
would sometimes wish to be in the right. 

I am, Dear Sir, your sincere friend, and ardent admirer, 

Oliver Goldsmith 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 

Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain ; 
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, 
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, 
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed : 
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 5 

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please. 
How often have I loitered o'er thy green, 
Where humble happiness endeared each scene ! 
How often have I paused on every charm. 
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, 10 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill, 
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade. 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! 
How often have I blest the coming day, 15 

When toil remitting lent its turn to' play. 
And all the village train, from labour free, 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree. 
While many a pastime circled in the shade. 
The young contending as the old surveyed ; 20 

And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, 
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round. 
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired, 
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired ; 
The dancing pair that simply sought renown 25 

By holding out to tire each other down ; 
rhe swain mistrustless of his smutted face, 

I 



2 GOLDSMITH 

While secret laughter tittered round the place ; 

The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love, 

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove. 30 

These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these, 

With sweet succession, taught even toil to please : 

These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed : 

These were thy charms — but all these charms are fled ! 

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 35 

Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen. 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the whole domain, 
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40 

No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, 
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; 
Along thy glades, a solitary guest. 
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; 
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45 

' And tires their echoes with unvaried cries ; 
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all. 
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, 

Far, far away thy children leave the land. 5° 

\/^ 
111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made : 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 55 

When once destroyed, can never be supplied. 

A time there was, ere England's griefs began. 
When every rood of ground maintained its man ; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 3 

For him light labour spread her wholesome store, 

Just gave what life required, but gave no more : 60 

His best companions, innocence and health ; 

And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. 

But times are altered ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain ; 
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, 65 

Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose. 
And every want to opulence allied, 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
Those calm desires that asked but little room, 70 

Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene. 
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green ; 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore. 
And rural mirth and manners are no more. 

Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 75 

Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. 
Here, as I take my solitary rounds 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds. 
And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 80 

Remembrance wakes with all her busy train. 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 85 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose : 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 



4 GOLDSMITH 

Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 90 

Around my fire an evening group to draw, 

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; 

And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 

Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 

I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 95 

Here to return, — and die at home at last. 

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline, 
Retreats from care, that never must be mine, 
How happy he who crowns in shades like these, 
A youth of labour with an age of ease ; 100 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try. 
And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
Nor surly porter stands in guilty state, 105 

To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay. 
While resignation gently slopes the way; no 

And, all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past ! 

Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close, 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 

There, as I past with careless steps and slow, 1 1 5 

The mingling notes came softened from below; 
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung, 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young. 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 120 



Hi! 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE 5 

The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, 

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; — 

These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 

And filled each pause the nightingale had made. 

But now the sounds of population fail, 125 

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. 

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, 

But all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 

All but yon widowed, solitary thing. 

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring ; 130 

She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, 

To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread. 

To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn. 

To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn ; 

She only left of all the harmless train, 135 

The sad historian of the pensive plain. 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled. 
And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 140 

A man he was to all the country dear. 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 
Remote from towns he ran his godly race. 
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place ; 
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, 145 

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
His house was known to all the vagrant train ; 
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain : 150 

The long remembered beggar was his guest. 
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 



6 GOLDSMITH 

The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ; 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 155 

Sate by his fire, and talked the night away, 

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done. 

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. 

Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, 

And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 160 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 

His pity gave ere charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side ; 
But in his duty prompt at every call, 165 

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all ; 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies. 
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 170 

Beside the bed where parting life was laid. 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed, 
The reverend champion stood. At his control 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 175 

And his last faltering accents whispered pra^"se. 

^-^^ 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace. 

His looks adorned the venerable place ; 

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, 

And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. 180 

The service past, around the pious man. 

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 7 

Even children followed with endearing wile, 

And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile. 

His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 185 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ; 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form. 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 190 

Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 

Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 

There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 195 

The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 200 

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper circling round 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. 
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 205 

The love he bore to learning was in fault ; 
The village all declared how much he knew : 
'T was certain he could write, and cipher too ; 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And even the story ran that he could gauge : 210 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 
For, even tho' vanquished, he could argue still ; 
While words of learned length and thundering sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; 



8 GOLDSMITH 

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 215 

That one small head cm^d carry all he knew. 

But past is all his fame. The very spot 
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot. 
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, 
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 220 

Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired. 
Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired, 
Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, 
And news much older than their ale went round. 
Imagination fondly stoops to trace 225 

The parlour splendours of that festive place : 
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor. 
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door ; 
The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; 230 

The pictures placed for ornament and use, 
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; 
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day. 
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay ; 
While broken teacups, wisely kept for shew, 235 

Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row. 

Vain, transitory splendours ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall? 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 240 

Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To sweet oblivion of his daily care ; 
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail ; 
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 245 

Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 9 

The host himself no longer shall be found 

Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; 

Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest, 

Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 250 

Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, 
These simple blessings of the lowly train ; 
To me more dear, congenial to my heart. 
One native charm, than all the gloss of art ; 
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, 255 

The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway ; 
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, 
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. 
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade. 
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed, — 260 

In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain. 
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; 
And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy. 
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy. 

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey 265 

The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 
'T is yours to judge, how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and an happy land. 
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, 
And shouting folly hails them from her shore ; 270 

Hoards, even beyond the miser's wish abound. 
And rich men flock from all the world around. 
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 275 

Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds. 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 



lO GOLDSMITH 

The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, 

Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth ; 280 

His seat, where solitary sports are seen. 

Indignant spurns the cottage from the green : 

Around the world each needful product flies, 

For all the luxuries the world supplies ; 

While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all 285 

In barren splendour feebly waits the fall. 

As some fair female unadorned and plain, 
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign. 
Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, 
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes ; 290 

But when those charms are past, for charms are frail, 
When time advances, and when lovers fail. 
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless. 
In all the glaring impotence of dress. 

Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed : 295 

In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed ; 
But verging to decline, its splendours rise, 
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ; 
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, 
The mournful peasant leads his humble band, 300 

And while he sinks, without one arm to save. 
The country blooms, — a garden and a grave. 

Where, then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, 
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? 
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed 305 

He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade. 
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 
And even the bare-worn common is denied. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE II 

If to the city sped — what waits him there? 
To see profusion that he must not share ; 310 

To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind ; 
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know 
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. 

Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, 315 

There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ; 
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display. 
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 
The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign. 
Here, richly deckt, admits the gorgeous train : 320 

Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square. 
The ratthng chariots clash, the torches glare. 
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 
Sure these denote one universal joy ! 

Are these thy serious thoughts? — Ah ! turn thine eyes 325 
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest. 
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn : 330 

Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled. 
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 
And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour. 
When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335 

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown. 

Do thine, sweet Auburn, — thine, the loveliest train, — 
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain? 
Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led. 
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread ! 340 



12 GOLDSMITH 

Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene, 
Where half the convex world intrudes between, 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. 
Far different there from all that charmed before, 345 

The various terrors of that horrid shore \ 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray. 
And fiercely shed intolerable day; 
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, 
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 350 

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned, 
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; 
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ; 
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, 355 

And savage men more murderous still than they; 
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, 
Mingling 'the ravaged landscape with the skies. 
Far different these from every former scene. 
The cooling brook, the grassy- vested green, 360 

The breezy covert of the warbling grove. 
That only sheltered thefts of harmless love. 

Good Heaven ! what sorrows gloomed that parting day. 
That called them from their native walks away ; 
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 365 

Hung round their bowers, and fondly looked their last. 
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main. 
And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. 370 

The good old sire the first prepared to go 
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 1 3 

But, for himself, in conscious virtue brave. 

He only wished for worlds beyond the grave. 

His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 375 

The fond companion of his helpless years. 

Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 

And left a lover's for a father's arms. 

With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 

And blest the cot where every pleasure rose, 380 

And kist her thoughtless babes with many a tear, 

And claspt them close, in sorrow doubly dear. 

Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief 

In all the silent manliness of grief. 

O luxury ! thou curst by Heaven's decree, 385 

How ill exchanged are things like these for thee ! 
How do thy potions, with insidious joy. 
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy ! 
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, 
Boast of a florid vigour not their own. 390 

At every draught more large and large they grow, 
A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe ; 
Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound, 
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 

Even now the devastation is begun, 395 

And half the business of destruction done ; 
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural virtues leave the land. 
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, 
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 400 

Downward they move, a melancholy band. 
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 
Contented toil, and hospitable care, 



14 GOLDSMITH 

And kind connubial tenderness are there ; 

And piety with wishes placed above, 405 

And steady loyalty, and faithful love. 

And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 

Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 

Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 

To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 410 

Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 

My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 

Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe. 

That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 

Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 415 

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 

Farewell, and O ! where'er thy voice be tried, 

On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side. 

Whether where equinoctial fervours glow, 

Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420 

Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, 

Redress the rigours of the inclement clime ; 

Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; 

Teach him that states, of native strength possest, 425 

Tho' very poor, may still be very blest ; 

That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay. 

As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away ; 

While self-dependent power can time defy. 

As rocks resist the billows and the sky. 430 



.^<- 



ELEGY 

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 



INTRODUCTION TO GRAY'S ELEGY 
IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 

Birth and Early Education. Thomas Gray, the son of Philip 
Gray, an exchange broker and scrivener, was born in London, 
December 26, 17 16. His father, a man of some wealth, was 
brutal and extravagant in temperament, and neglected and ill 
used his family. Gray owed him little, unless the musical element 
in his poetry; for Philip Gray, like the father of Milton, was a 
skilled musician. The young Gray was indebted for the care of 
his bringing up and for his support at school almost wholly to his 
mother, to whom he remained tenderly attached all his life. 
His mother's brother, Robert Antrobus, taught at Eton, and 
here the poet had his preparatory education, afterwards attend- 
ing Cambridge. When his father refused to educate him, Gray's 
mother maintained him at school and in the university, support- 
ing herself and her children — there were twelve in all, but none 
but Gray reached maturity — by engaging for many years in the 
millinery business with a sister. This was despite her husband's 
attempts to secure her earnings for his own purposes. Gray 
studied classical literature, history, and language, at Cambridge, 
but shunned the study of mathematics. Intending later to read 
law, he left the university in 1738, not yet having his degree, 
and the next year set out to tour France and Italy with his 
school friend, Horace Walpole, son of the prime minister and 
later a prominent if somewhat dilettante man of letters of the 
day. Gray remained abroad about two years, although not all 
of the time was passed with Walpole. 

17 



1 8 INTRODUCTION 

Life at Cambridge. Gray's father died in 1 741, having wasted 
a large part of his fortune, and Gray returned in 1742, with but 
a small income of his own, to Cambridge, where he went into 
residence, giving up his earlier intention to read law. Here he 
was to spend in relative quiet and seclusion over thirty years of 
his life. After the death of his father, his mother and aunt dis- 
posed of their shop and went to live with a widowed sister, Mrs, 
Rogers, at the little village of Stoke Pogis, or Poges, in Buck- 
inghamshire, about four miles north of the Thames, near Eton, 
The most picturesque feature of this village is the small church, 
built as early as the fourteenth century, which stands in a level, 
thickly-shaded churchyard dotted with graves. Gray passed most 
of his vacations at this village with his mother. At Cambridge 
he settled down to a life of reading and study, too weighed 
down by the menace of ill health to be very ambitious. He 
came, nevertheless, to be recognized as one of the most learned 
men of his time, and is still ranked among the most scholarly 
of our poets. The influence of his academic life is distinguish- 
able in his verse. The subjects in which he was interested 
included history, classical literature, older English literature, 
modern literature, music, painting, architecture, philosophy, 
geography, zoology, botany, antiquities, heraldry, gardening. 
His chief recreation was travel. He visited the Scotch High- 
lands in 1765, and made a tour of the Lake country in 1769, 
anticipating Wordsworth in his enthusiasm for the region which 
the latter poet was to make classic. 

There are but few external happenings to record of Gray's 
later life. His mother died in 1755 and was buried at Stoke 
Poges. In 1757 he was offered the poet-laureateship, but re- 
fused to accept the honor. In 1768 he was appointed professor 
of modern history at Cambridge, a position which he retained till 
his death, although he delivered no lectures, the latter being not 
always demanded of professors then. On July 24, 1771, while 



INTRODUCTION 19 

at dinner in College Hall, he was seized with convulsions. He 
died six days later, on July 30, at the age of fifty-four. 

Literary Work. Gray's literary work bulks very slight, con- 
sidering his ability and the rank which he takes among English 
poets. He has left hardly more than 14,000 lines of poetry. 
These consist chiefly of the early odes, written about 1742, On 
Sprijig and O71 a Distant Prospect of Eton College^ — the latter 
his first published piece, from which comes the familiar line, 
" Where ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise " ; the Elegy, 
destined to become the mid-eighteenth century classic ; and his 
two most ambitious pieces, the odes The Prog?'ess of Poesie and 
The Bai'd, published in 1757. In later life he began to trans- 
late and imitate the poetry of the Celts and the Norsemen. He 
was a delightful letter writer and diarist, his letters and journals 
being as charming as his poetry. They reveal the eclectic char- 
acter of his interests, his learning, his sensitiveness to the various 
movements of his time, his keen love of the mediaeval ; and they 
give glimpses of his feeling for nature, as, for example, his en- 
thusiasm for mountains and landscape. Outside Gray's journals 
little else of this temper is to be met with from men of letters 
until the next period, when the revolution in poetic taste fore- 
shadowed by the Elegy and The Deserted Village is consummated. 

Many attempts have been made to explain the scantiness of 
Gray's literary productiveness. One cause was undoubtedly his 
ennui of spirits due to prevailing ill health. Gray was a sufferer 
by paternal inheritance from the painful disease of the gout. 
His lack of physical health would account sufficiently of itself 
for his indolence as a writer ; although there have been of course 
poets, like Pope, who managed to find abundant literary expres- 
sion despite the burden of disease. It has been suggested also 
that Gray was overacademic to write freely or spontaneously. 
He was too studious, too fastidious, or too critical for the creative 
impulse to find free play in him. The two attitudes of mind, the 



20 INTRODUCTION 

critical and the creative, are rarely compatible, and Gray's endow- 
ments of imagination and originality seem not to have been so 
strong as to break through into written expression at any cost. 

Perhaps, however, the real explanatioj^ of Gray's literary in- 
activity is that suggested by Matthew Arnold.^ Arnold believes 
that Gray was repressed by the spirit of his age ; that he "never 
spoke out," for the reason that he was born out of date. He 
lived either too late or too early. The mid-eighteenth century 
was not a stimulating poetical period, and Gray's gifts and 
tastes were not those which the age of Dr. Johnson encouraged, 
or with which it was in sympathy. Had he been a contem- 
porary of Milton, or yet of Burns, he might have come to his 
own ; his poetical genius might have found, Arnold thinks, full 
expression. 

Personal Traits. Gray was small of stature, with fine fea- 
tures, was careful in dress, and reserved in manner. Many 
letters which characterize him for us have been preserved 
by friends and biographers. Dr. Beattie, professor at the Uni- 
versity of Aberdeen, with whom Gray was on familiar terms, 
writes to a friend : 

I am sorry you did not see Mr. Gray on his return ; you would 
have been much pleased with him. Setting aside his merit as a poet, 
which, however, in my opinion, is greater than any of his contempo- 
raries can boast, in this or any other nation ; I found him possest of 
the most exact taste, the soundest judgment, and the most extensive 
learning. He is happy in a singular facility of expression. His con- 
versation abounds in original observations, delivered with no appear- 
ance of sententious formality, and seeming to arise spontaneously, 
without study or premeditation. I passed two very agreeable days 
with him at Glammis, and found him as easy in his manners, and as 
communicative and frank, as I could have wished.^ 

^ Essays in Critktsffi. Second series. 

^ Life of Dr. Beattie, II, 321. Cited by Mitford. 



INTRODUCTION 21 

A minor contemporary poet, commenting on Dr. Johnson's 
not very successful Life of Gray, wrote : 

If there is a writer who more than others has a claim to be ex- 
empted from his [Dr. Johnson's] petulance, Mr. Gray has that claim. 
His own polished manners restrained him from ever giving offence 
to any good man ; his warm and cheerful benevolence endeared him 
to all his friends ; though he lived long in a college, he lived not 
sulloily there, but in a liberal intercourse with the wisest and most 
virtuous men of his time. He was perhaps the most learned man of 
the age, but his mind never contracted the rust of pedantry. He had 
too good an understanding to neglect that urbanity which renders 
society pleasing : his conversation was instructing, elegant, and agree- 
able. Superior knowledge, an exquisite taste in the fine arts, and, 
above all, purity of morals, and an unaffected reverence for religion, 
made this excellent person an ornament to society, and an honour to 
human nature.^ 

Others call attention to his sense of humor, manifest in his 
speech and in his letters, and to his fondness for music. The 
most unfriendly of his critics could find nothing worse to sug- 
gest of him than that he was sometimes overreticent or ab- 
stracted, and sometimes perhaps overfastidious. 

Composition of the " Elegy." The Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard was begun in 1742, and not finished until eight years later. 
It was published anonymously in 1750, and sprang at once into 
the favor which it has never lost. In two months it had gone 
into four editions. A note by Gray in one MS. of the poem 
cites fifteen authorized editions, and pirated editions innumer- 
able. Professor Gosse ^ thinks that the beginning of the compo- 
sition of the Elegy may date from the funeral of Gray's uncle, 
Jonathan Rogers, who died October i, 1742. Others have 
thought that the beginning of the poem might date from the 

^Inquiry into So?ne Passages in D?: /ok?tson''s Lives of the Poets, by 
R. Potter, 1783. 2 Lij-^ of Gray, Chapter III. 



22 INTRODUCTION 

death of Gray's college friend, Richard West, in 1742. Possibly 
the first dawn of some of the ideas of the poem may be detected 
in the closing lines of an Alcaic Ode, written in 1741, the best 
known and practically the last of Gray's Latin poems. ^ The 
final touches were given to the Elegy June 12, 1750, at Stoke 
Poges, where the poem had been begun. The death of Gray's 
aunt in 1749 seems to have brought the forgotten poem to his 
mind, and he took it in hand again. According to tradition, 
some stanzas were composed by the poet among the tombs at 
Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge, the great bell 
of St. Mary's perhaps suggesting the curfew of the poem. Un- 
doubtedly the churchyard at Stoke Poges — where his aunt, later 
his mother, and then Gray himself was buried — has the better 
right to be considered the churchyard of the Elegy. It is so 
looked upon by the tourists from all countries, who to-day stroll 
among the trees and graves, recalling the lines of the poem, or 
who stand before the stone mausoleum erected to Gray's mem- 
ory' in 1789 and inscribed with his name. 

In the early editions the Elegy is not printed in stanzas of four 
lines, but continuously, without stanzaic pauses. Although the 
consecutive lines of the printing made the divergence slightly 
less conspicuous at the time, probably the poet showed no little 
independence in departing from the heroic couplet, the standard 
verse form of the day, and employing the heroic quatrain, — that 
is, stanzas of four lines, in iambic pentameter, with alternating 
rhymes. The latter form was rarely employed when the Elegy 
appeared. The poet may have derived his use of this measure 
from Dryden's notable Annus Mirabilis (1667), which is written 
in this form, or from some minor contemporary piece. ^ 

Historically the Elegy is to be grouped with the " literature 
of melancholy " deriving from Milton's H Ee?iseroso. Its great 
success fixed the quatrain henceforth as a standard elegy form, 
1 Gosse, Life of Gray, Chapter II. 2 jbid., Chapter V. 



INTRODUCTION 23 

and caused many translations and imitations of the poem to 
be made in foreign languages. One of the most notable of its 
derivatives is the French poet Lamartine's Le Lac. After Blair's 
success with The Grave (1745) and Gray's with the -Elegy ^ 
"churchyard pieces" long remained the poetic vogue; note, 
for example, Philip Freneau's The Indian Burying Ground and 
Eutaw Sprifigs^ in early American literature ; perhaps also, in 
some features, Bryant's Thanatopsis . 

Popularity of the "Elegy." So well \oved has Gray's poem 
proved to be, that although there are many more elegies of 
note in our language, not a few of them far more ambitious, 
Gray's is that first recalled by the majority of readers ; indeed, 
it seems to have become practically " The Elegy" of our lan- 
guage. It is a poem of the contemplative class ; and in its 
vague dejection and the moralizing tone of its reflections on 
life, death, and success, it has much in common with other 
poetry of the eighteenth century, prevailingly a period of poetry 
of moral didacticism. In other respects the Elegy diverges 
markedly from contemporary verse. Gray's poem is thoroughly 
humanized, fused with emotion, and the language in which it is 
expressed is not abstract but concrete. He takes the reader 
away from the prevailing themes of the life of the town and of 
society. He has democratic feeling, a strong sympathy with 
the narrow lot and the restricted opportunities of the rude fore- 
fathers of the hamlet, and his treatment shows sensitiveness to 
landscape and a delicate sympathy with nature. Aside from 
the universality of the sentiment, most readers of the Elegy 
find that it is the poet's personal introduction to his subject 
which appeals to them most strongly. In the opening stanzas 
he conveys perfectly the stillness of twilight and the English 
rural feeling, fixing just the right atmosphere of quiet, tinged 
with melancholy, for his gentle meditations. The poet's tone in 
reflection is temperate and just. The Elegy reveals little keen 



24 INTRODUCTION 

personal sorrow. The author raises no questions and expresses 
no rebellion. His attitude is one of acceptance. He is even a 
little formal and dispassionate ; so much so that Taine com- 
plains that his emotion is academical, his tears cold,^ But most 
readers experience no doubt as to the reality of the feeling and 
the breadth of the appeal. Dr. Johnson was not an admirer of 
Gray, and his life of the latter is the weakest of his Lives of the 
Poets; but speaking of the Elegy he concedes that "The Church- 
yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, 
and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." 
Another factor in the remarkable vitality of the poem is its 
felicity in expression. Gray wrought the Elegy with exquisite 
care, as he did all his poems. He testifies that he aimed at a 
style with " extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, per- 
spicuous, and musical."^ The sound of the lines is as notable 
as the thought, and perhaps somewhat more original. At times, 
as was unavoidable for an eighteenth-century poet, he falls into 
a certain conventionality of phrasing, a fault to which Gold- 
smith, although writing later, was still more prone. In an age 
when the influence of Pope was so dominant, the wonder is, 
not that Gray lapsed occasionally into artificial phrasing, but 
that his work is so full as it is of phrasing which is fresh. In 
the main the language of the Elegy is almost perfect in its con- 
densation and lucidity. The felicitous and rememberable quality 
of its diction and the sculpturesque perfection of its stately 
quatrains have helped to make phrases, lines, or even whole 
stanzas of the poem part of our daily speech. 

1 Histoiy of English Lite7'ature, Book III, Chapter IX. 

2 Letter to Mason, 1758. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Biographies of Gray have been written by Dr. Samuel John- 
son, in his Lives of the Poets (1779-1781); by Mitford, prefixed 
to his 18 1 4 edition of Gray's poems; and by Edmund Gosse, 
in the English Men of Letters Series (1882). 

See also Gray's Life aiid Letfe?'s, edited by Mason (1774); 
Correspo?idence and Reminiscences of the Rev. Norto7i JVichoIls, 
edited by Mitford (1843) i Correspondence of Gray a?id Mason ^ 
edited by Mitford (1853) ; Souvenirs du Chevalier de Bonstette7i 
(1832); and Corresponde7ice of LLorace Walpole. More recent 
books on Gray, his letters and his friends, are G?'ay and his 
Friends^ by D. C. Tovey, and Letters of Thomas G?'ay, edited, 
with biographical notice, by H. M. Rideout. 

For essays on Gray, see those by Arnold in Essays i?i Crit- 
icis7n, second series ; J. R. Lowell, in Latest Lite7'ary Essays ; 
A. Dobson, in Eightee7ith Ce7itu7y Vig7iettes ; G, P. Lathrop, in 
the Warner Lib7'ary of the Wo7'hfs Best Literature ; and Leslie 
Stephen in LLou7's i7i a Library. 

A Conco7'da7ice of the E7iglish Poems of Thomas Gray has 
•been published by Professor A. S, Cook (1908). 



25 



ELEGY 

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 
The plowman homeward plods his weary way, 

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 5 

And all the air a solemn stillness holds. 
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ; 

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r. 

The moping owl does to the moon complain lo 

Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r. 

Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade. 
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, 

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 15 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing Mom, 

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed. 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn. 

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20 

27 



28 GRAY 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 

Or busy housewife ply her evening care : 
No children run to lisp their sire's return, 

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 25 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 

How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 30 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 

The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r. 

And all that beauty, all that w^ealth e'er gave, * 

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, 35 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault. 

If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 40 

Can storied urn, or animated bust, 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust. 

Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death ? 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 45 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 

Or wak'd to ejrtasy the living lyre. 



ELEGY 29 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page 

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 50 

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, 

And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear : 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 55 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village-Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, 

The little Tyrant of his fields withstood ; 
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 60 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 

The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes, 

Their lot forbad : nor circumscrib'd alone 65 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd ; 

Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne. 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind. 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide. 

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray ; 
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 75 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 



30 GRAY 

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect 

Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, 

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80 

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, 

The place of Fame and Elegy supply : 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, 85 

This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd. 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day. 

Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind ? 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies ; 

Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 90 

Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries ; 

Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead 

Dost in these lines their artless tales relate ; 
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, 95 

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate. 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 

" Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 100 

" There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high. 
His listless length at noontide would he stretch. 

And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



ELEGY 31 

" Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 105 

Mutt'ring his wayward fancies would he rove ; 

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn. 
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

" One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill. 

Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree; no 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; 

" The next, with dirges due in sad array, 

Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne. — 

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115 

Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 

THE EPITAPH 

Here 7'ests his head upon the lap of Earth, 

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown : 
Fair Science frown^ d not on his humble birth, 

And Melancholy mark V him for her own. 1 20 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere. 

Heaven did a recompefise as largely send : 
He gave to Mis ^ry all he had, a tear, 

He gained from Heaveii ('twas all he wished) a friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 125 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
( There they alike i?i trembling hope repose) 

The bosom of his Father and his God. 



NOTES 



NOTES ON 
THE DESERTED VILLAGE 



1. Auburn : Goldsmith obtained the name from his friend and fellow- 
member of the Literary Club, Bennet Langton (Forster's Life, II, 206). 
There is an Auburn in Wiltshire, but it is not Goldsmith's. 

2. swain : a favorite word for young man, lover, or shepherd, in the 
set or conventional poetical phraseology of the eighteenth century. 
Goldsmith uses it here in the sense of rustic or countryman. 

3. smiling spring : the first of the many personifications,of which the 
eighteenth century was especially fond, in the poem. Other and more 
typical examples are the personified abstractions, 11. 68, 81, 319, 321, 
403, etc. But few of these (so virtue, 1. 108; folly, 1. 270; Poetry, 1. 407; 
and two or three more) are capitalized in the original editions. 

4. parting summer: departing. Cf. "parting day," Gray's Elegy ; 
"parted from the jousts," Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine, 1. 618. 
" Depart " formerly meant separate. " Part " and " depart " have ex- 
changed meanings. 

6. bowers : Goldsmith was partial to this word. Cf. 11. -^^t^, 37, 47, 86, 
366. 

10. cot: cottage (the older meaning of the word). Cf. "poure folke 
in cotes," Langland, Piers Plowman, C, x, 72 ; also Burns's The Cotter^s 
Saturday Night. The word occurs often as a suffix in place-names: 
Charlcote, etc. 

12. decent church: deceftt is used in its root sense of comely, becom- 
ing. Sir Walter Scott wrote of Lissoy {Miscellaneotcs Prose Works, 
1834, III, 250) : 

The church which tops the neighboring hill, the mill, and the brook, are still 
pointed out ; and a hawthorn has suffered the penalty of poetical celebrity, being 
cut to pieces by those admirers of the bard who desired to have classical tooth- 
pick cases and tobacco stoppers. Much of this supposed locality may be fanciful ; 
but it is a pleasing testimony to the poet in the land of his fathers. 

Cf. also the account of Dr. Strean, who was Henry Goldsmith's suc- 
cessor as curate of Kilkenny West, near Lissoy (Forster's Life, II, 
207). 

35 



36 NOTES 

14. talking age : other instances of Goldsmith's use of an abstract 
for a concrete noun, as talking age for " talking old folks," occur, 11. 248, 
IPTi^ 304» 321, etc. 

15. According to his friend Cook, 11. 5-15 were Goldsmith's second 
morning's work on the poem (cf. Introduction, p. xxi) ; but probably 
this statement should not be understood too literally. 

17. train: another favorite word with Goldsmith, especially as a 
rhyme word. Cf. 11. 63, 81, 135, 149, 252, 320, ^iZl- ^"^ many of these 
cases he uses the word with rather vague significance. 

18. Led up: arranged, brought in order. 

20. contending : Goldsmith liked this absolute use of the present 
participle. Cf. 11. 108, iii, 297, and note on 1. 79. 

22. sleights of art: feats of dexterity. Cf. "magic sleights," Mac- 
beth^ III, V, 26; "sleight-of-hand," etc. 

25. simply: artlessly. 

29. virgin: a favorite word for girl or maiden in eighteenth century 
poetic diction, as swain for man, and matron for married woman. 

35. lawn: not a sweep of cultivated grass, as now, but an open 
grassy stretch of country, a plain. Cf. the use of the word by Milton, 
Dryden, and Pope. 

37. tyrant: some wealthy landowner. The idea of the inclosure of 
the domain and the eviction of the tenants was perhaps suggested to 
Goldsmith by something of the kind in the neighborhood of Lissoy, 
when a certain General Napier, returning enriched from Spain, turned 
his tenants out of their farms that he might inclose the land as his own 
private domain. Cf. the testimony of Dr. Strean (Forster's Life^ II, 
p. 207). There were contemporary evictions enough in England, how- 
ever, some of which Goldsmith saw ; and the suggestion might easily 
have come from these. 

39. One only master: poetic for one single master. 

42. Note the alliteration in this line. 

44. bittern : perhaps an echo of Isaiah xiv. 23. Cf. also Thomson's 
Seasons, Spring, 11. 21-23. ^^ ^^^ History of Ajiimated N'attire, VI, p. 2, 
Goldsmith writes of the bittern, a bird of the heron family : 

Those who walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented rivers 
must remember a variety of notes from different waterfowl : the loud scream of 
the wild goose, the croaking of the mallard, the whining of the lapwing, and the 
tremulous neighing of the jacksnipe. But of all those sounds there is none so 



NOTES 



37 



dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern. It is impossible for words to give 
those who have not heard this evening-call an adequate idea of its solemnity. It 
is like the interrupted bellowing of a bull, but hoUower and louder, and is heard 
at a mile's distance, as if issuing from some formidable being that resided at the 
bottom of its waters. 

I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note 
affected the whole village ; they considered it as the presage of some sad event, 
and generally found or made one to succeed it. 

45. lapwing: sometimes called the pewit, from its cry. 

51. Ill , . . ills : an awkward repetition, rather suiprising in so careful 
a polisher of his lines as Goldsmith. 

52. decay: decrease in numbers. 

54. breath, etc. : Prior points out as a possible source for this a line 
by the French poet, De Caux : 

Un souffle peut detruire et (qu')un souffle a produit. 

Cf. also the sentiment in Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night, 1. 165. 

55. bold peasantry: the small farmer or yeomanry class, which for 
centuries had held an honored position in English history. The rapid 
decline of this sturdy body in the eighteenth century, due to various 
causes, was thought to weaken the country greatly. Goldsmith was not 
alone in regretting their remarkable diminution. Cf. Gibbins's Itidtcstry 
in England, 276-279. 

57. England's griefs: the poet would have found some trouble in 
fixing the date when " England's griefs began " ; his specific reference 
here, however, is to the conditions described, 11. 57-62. This paragraph 
is often pointed out as another instance of the fondness of the poets 
to look back on good old days, the "golden age" myth, which dated 
from classical times. 

•^' 63. trade's unfeeling train : the phrase should be noted as significant 
of Goldsmith's peculiar views with regard to the influence of trade or 
commerce. Cf. Introduction, p. xxii. 

67. opulence: the first edition, altered in the third, read, "to hixury 
allied." 

69. These . . . hours : These is the reading of the fifth edition. Most 
modem editions read, '-'•Those gentle hours," etc. 

74. manners : the word is equivalent to customs here. 

76. parent, etc. : a rather strained figure. 

76. confess : give evidence of. 



38 NOTES 

77-80. These lines read in the first, second, and third editions : 

Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range, 
Trace every scene, and wonder at the change, 
Remembrance, etc, 

79. elapsed, etc. : for other cases of the absolute use of the past 
participle, of which Goldsmith was very fond, cf. 11. 95, 157, 181, 393. 
Cf. also note on 1. 20. — return to view : in reality Goldsmith never 
returned to his boyhood home or to Ireland after 1752. 

86. lay me down: prose diction would employ the reflexive "myself" 
instead of the personal pronoun. Similar expressions, preserving or 
imitating archaic constructions, are " sat him down," " I doubt me," 
"get thee away," etc. 

87-88. In the first, second, and third edition, these lines read: 

My anxious day to husband near the close, 
And keep life's flame from wasting by repose. 

The alteration improved the figure. 

93. as an hare : the first of the many formal similes of the poem. Cf. 
11. 167-170, 189-192, 287-302, 427-430. For Goldsmith's views w^ith 
regard to poetic figures, cf. (if it be his) the " Essay on the Use of 
Metaphors," reprinted under " Unacknowledged Essays," in Cunning- 
ham's edition. Vol. III. Present usage would write "which" for "whom" 
and " a " instead of " an " hare. Cf . the rule in grammars. Goldsmith likes 
to use an under such conditions. Cf. 1. 26S. 

96. return, etc. : it was Goldsmith's own wish to return to his native 
village to die. Cf. The Citizen of the World, Letter CIII : 

Whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever 
we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity : we long to 
die in that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate 
every calamity. 

98. never must be mine : destined never to be mine. 

99. happy : the first edition, altered in the third, read, " How blest is 
he," etc. Compare the thought in the essay in The Bee on "Happiness 
in a great measure dependent on Constitution " : 

... by struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the 
conflict. The only method to come off victorious is by running away. 

104. tempt . . . the deep : make trial of the deep. A Latinism. Cf. 
Vergil, Eclogues, IV, 32, " temptare Thetim ratibus " (Rolfe). 



NOTES 



39 



105. guilty state : a pomp that, under the circumstances, is criminal. 

106. famine, etc.: note the number of abstract nouns personified in 
this passage. Cf. note on 1. 3. 

107. latter end : death. A bibUcal expression. Cf. Job viii. 7; Proverbs 
xix. 20. Since the sixteenth century, latter has been used in a number 
of stock phrases, as here, as a superlative. 

109. Bends: the first edition, altered in the third, read, '■'■Sinks to 
the grave," etc. — unperceived decay: a line suggested very likely by 
I. 293 of Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, which contains the same 
phrase (Dobson). 

110. resignation: Sir Joshua Reynolds derived the name of his paint- 
ing " Resignation " from this passage. He dedicated an engraving of 
the painting to Goldsmith in the following terms: "This attempt to 
express a character in The Deserted Village is dedicated to Dr. Gold- 
smith by his sincere friend and admirer, Joshua Reynolds." 

115. careless: carefree. 

118. to meet: ordinary diction would employ the preposition and 
the verbal noun rather than the gerund. For other examples of this 
construction, which is probably a Latinism, cf. 11. 145, 148, 161, 288. 

121. whispering: other onomatopoetic words in this passage are 
murmur, 1. 114, and gabbled, 1. 119. Essay XVIII among the "Unac- 
knowledged Essays" printed by Cunningham, Vol. Ill, contains a special 
passage on such words, of which a good deal was made in Goldsmith's 
day. Cf. also the famous lines in Pope's Essay on Criticism, 365 ff. 

122. vacant mind: the mind free from care or seriousness; or pos- 
sibly the reference is to the loud meaningless laugh of some village 
idiot. 

124. nightingale: in reality the nightingale is not found in Ireland 
(Rolfe). In his Animated Nature Goldsmith says of the nightingale 
(Cunningham, IV, 420) : 

Her note is soft, various, and interrupted ; she seldom holds it without a 
pause above the time that one could count twenty. The nightingale's pausing 
song would be the proper epithet for this bird's music with us, which is more 
pleasing than the warbling of any other bird, because it is heard at a time when 
the rest are silent. 

126. fluctuate in the gale : often pointed out as a line exactly in the 
stereotyped manner of Pope and his followers. The essay cited (note 
on 1. i2t) contains a passage commenting on the metaphorical express- 
iveness oi fluctuate, and citing examples of its effective use. 



40 



NOTES 



128. bloomy: not a very common word. For another instance of its 
use, cf. Milton, Sonnet to a N'ightingale. 

130. plashy : abounding in plashes or puddles. Used by Words- 
worth in The Excursion^ Bk. VIII. Both bloomy and plashy sound 
somewhat strange in Goldsmith's conservative vocabulary, though they 
would not in poetry of another period. 

131. matron: cf. note on 1. 29. According to Dr. Strean (Forster's 
Life, II, 207), the poor widow was one Catherine Giraghty : 

To this day (1807), the brook and ditches near the spot where her cabin stood 
abound with cresses . . . and her children live in the neighborhood. 

140. village preacher: the famous portrait of the village preacher 
should be compared with the earlier and parallel portraits of Chaucer 
and Dryden. Cf. Appendix. The picture seems to have been taken in 
part from recollections of the poet's brother Henry, to whom The 
Traveller vidiS, dedicated, and who died just before The Deserted Village 
was written. The natures of father and son seem to have been similar, 
and the son, like the father, was a humble curate on small salary. A 
few critics suggest that traits of Goldsmith's uncle, Thomas Contarine, 
may also be embodied. So Dobson, Life, p. 187. — mansion: used in its 
root sense of abode, dwelling place. 

142. passing: surpassingly. Since the fifteenth century a favorite 
intensive adverb with poets and romancers. Cf. "A faire lady, and a 
passynge wyse," Alorte Darthiir, I, 7. 

145. Unpractised: the first edition, altered in the fifth, read, '■^Unskit- 
ftd he," etc. For the following of the participle or adjective by the 
infinitive, cf. note on 1. 118. 

148. More skilled: the first edition, altered in the fifth, read, "More 
bentr 

149-162. The proverbial Irish hospitality, one of Goldsmith's own 
traits. 

155. broken soldier : some of these traits were probably suggested by 
Goldsmith's old teacher, who was an ex-soldier. Cf. note on 1. 196. — 
bade : the usual past participle of " bid " is " bidden." Many editors 
read " bid " here. 

161. scan: cf. note on 1. 118. 

170. led the way: compare the last couplet in Chaucer's portrait ot 
the poor parson. Cf. Appendix. 

172. dismayed: filled the dying man with foreboding. 



NOTES 



41 



182. steady zeal: the first edition read, "With ready zeal." 

189-192. Goldsmith gives this simile, perhaps the most celebrated 
passage of the poem, as a separate complete sentence, although there 
is no main predicate. Compare the construction in the simile, 11. 287 ff. 

194. blossomed : written blossom'' d in the original editions. Gold- 
smith generally writes out the -ed of his participles — which is the 
usage in the present edition — or substitutes -t after voiceless conso- 
nants, as topt^ 1. 12, deckt^ 1. 320. He writes V/ in about half a dozen 
cases only. 

196. village master : the original of this picture was probably Thomas 
or " Paddy " Byrne, an ex-soldier, who was Goldsmith's teacher at Lissoy. 
Cf. Introduction, p. xiii. 

205-206. aught . . . fault: YxQ.ViCh. faute. The /was arbitrarily in- 
serted in the sixteenth century, when the connection of the word with 
the Latin y^7//^r^ was realized, and eventually it came to be pronounced. 
In Edwin and Angelina, Goldsmith rhymes "fault " with "sought," in 
Retaliatio7i with "caught." So generally in the poetry of the period. Cf. 
Emerson, History of the English Language, § 191- 

207. village : villagers. The abstract instead of the agent noun. 

209. terms and tides: terfus were periods when courts were assem- 
bled by justices; tides were ecclesiastical times or seasons, as Whit- 
suntide. 

210. gauge: measure the contents of barrels. Excisemen were pop- 
ularly called "gaugers." Cf. Burns, who was for a while inspector of 
liquor customs, or Kennedy in Scott's novel, Gny Mannering. 

213. learned length, etc.: to most readers this line suggests the 
manner of Goldsmith's friend. Dr. Johnson, author of the Dictionary, 
who was noted for his rather ponderous and erudite vocabulary and 
his blustering speech. 

217-218. spot . . . triumphed: the inn, the scene of some of Gold- 
smith's own triumphs. In the years when he was ostensibly preparing 
for the ministry, Goldsmith presided at the convivial meetings held 
nightly at the inn at Ballymahon, where his mother lived after the 
death of his father. " Here he was a triton among the minnows, the 
delight of horse-doctors and bagmen, and the idol of his former college 
associate" (Dobson's Life, p. 22). 

221. nut-brown: a familiar epithet to Goldsmith's readers. Cf. the 
ballad of the Nut-Brown Maid, and Milton's " nut-brown ale," V Allegro, 
1. 100. 



42 NOTES 

227-236. An interesting first draught of the descriptive passage that 
follows is preserved in a letter written by Goldsmith to his brother in 
1759. He sent it as a specimen of the manner of a " heroi-comical " 
poem he had in mind, the hero of which he intended to introduce in an 
alehouse. The passage appears again, slightly modified, in Letter XXX 
of The Citizen of the Worlds in which it figures as a description of an 
author's bedchamber. The latter passage runs : 

A window patch'd with paper lent a ray, 

That dimly show'd the state in which he lay : 

The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread ; 

The humid wall with paltry pictures spread ; 

The royal game of goose was there in view, 

And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ; 

The seasons fram'd with listing found a place, 

And brave Prince William show'd his lamp-black face : 

The morn was cold : he views with keen desire 

The rusty grate, unconscious of a fire ; 

With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scored, 

And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney-board. 

228. clock . . . clicked : the mimetic quality of this line should be 
noted. Cf. note on 1. 121. 

229. contrived: the participle. 

231. use: the pictures probably covered defects in the wall. 

232. twelve good rules: the composition of these rules was ascribed 
to Charles I, and they were hung up in most public houses of the time. 
Cf. Crabbe's line in The Parish Register, Part I : 

There is King Charles and all his glorious rules 
Who proved Misfortune's was the best of schools. 

The twelve rules were, according to Hale's Longer English Poems, 

P- 353: 

I. Urge no healths. 2. Profane no divine ordinances. 3. Touch no state 
matters. 4. Reveal no secrets. 5. Pick no quarrels. 6. Make no companions. 
7. Maintain no ill opinions. 8. Keep no bad company. 9. Encourage no vice. 
10. Make no long meals. 11. Repeat no grievances. 12. Lay no wagers. 

— game of goose : not the ordinary game of fox and geese, but a more 
complex game played with dice on a board on which a goose was pic- 
tured at intervals. Cf. Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, IV, ii. The game 
is mentioned by Scott, Waverley, Chapter III. 
236. chimney : fireplace. 



NOTES 



43 



243. The farmer knew the news because of his visits to markets ; 
the barber's loquacity is proverbial. 

244. woodman : a hunter or forester. 

248. mantling bliss : foaming ale. The eighteenth century liked such 
use of the abstract for the concrete. Cf. iufiocefice, 1. 328 ; also note on 
1. 14. 

253. congenial : supply more from the preceding. 

257. vacant: carefree. 

258. This line recalls Hamlet, I, v, 77; or, better, Scott's "Unwept, 
unhonored, and unsung," Lay of the Last Minstrel, VI. Rolfe cites 
also Paradise Lost, II, 185; V, 899; Merchant of Venice, III, ii, 159; 
and Byron, Childe Liar old, IV, 179, " unknelled, uncoffined, and un- 
known." 

268. an happy: cf. note on 1. 93. The thought of this passage was 
treated in fuller form by Goldsmith in Letter XXV of The Citizen of 
the World, on " The Natural Rise and Decline of Kingdoms," etc. 
The last sentences of the essay are : 

Happy, very happy, might they have been had they known when to bound 
their riches and their glory ; had they known that extending empire is often 
diminishing power . . . ; that too much commerce may injure a nation as well 
as too little ; and that there is a wide difference between a conquering and a 
flourishing empire. 

269. freighted ore : cf. The Traveller, 1. 398. The poet seems to 
mean that the country is bartering for foreign luxuries what is really 
needed for home consumption. Thus while more money comes into 
the country, it serves only to enhance the luxury of the rich, bringing 
loss rather than increase in the substantial products of the country. 

287. female: much used instead of "woman" in the eighteenth and 
early nineteenth centuries. Cf. the novels of Miss Burney (1752-1840), 
of Godwin (1756-1836), or of Cooper in America. 

288, Secure to please: confident of pleasing. A Latinism. Cf. note 
on 1. 118. 

293, solicitous to bless: anxious for success in her effort to charm. 

297. verging to decline: cf. note on 1. 20. 

304. contiguous pride: cf. note on 1. 14. 

308. bare-worn common: cf. Introduction, pp. x, xi. 

313. those joys : the first edition, altered in the third, read, " To see 
each joy." 

316. artist: artisan or mechanic. 



44 NOTES 

317. long-drawn: perhaps a verbal reminiscence of Gray's Elegy, 
1. 32. 

318. black gibbet : in 1758, when Goldsmith took up his residence in 
Green Arbour Court, he was very near the Old Bailey Sessions House, 
where all prisoners taken within ten miles of London were tried, and 
where they were publicly executed when condemned. Near by also was 
the famous Newgate Prison. In a period when stealing, forgery, and 
even lesser crimes were punishable by death, the number of executions 
was very great, and the gallows a common object in the landscape. 

319. dome: house. \-,2X\Vi doimis . Cf. The Traveller, \. 159. 

322. chariot: a favorite word in eighteenth century poetry for a car- 
riage of pleasure or of state. — torches: these were carried before the 
foot traveler by linkboys. They were very necessary even at a later 
period, because of the unpaved, badly lighted streets. 

326. houseless . . . female : cf. note on 1. 287. Lines 326-336 should be 
compared to the analogous passage in The Bee, "A City Night Piece," 
reprinted as Letter CXVII in The Citizen of the World : 

But who are these who make the streets their couch, and find a 'short repose 
from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent ? . . . These poor shivering females 
have once seen happier days and been flattered into beauty. . . . Perhaps, now 
lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are 
insensible, or debauchees who may curse but will not relieve them. Why, why 
was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve ? 

Goldsmith himself was very charitable to houseless wanderers. When 
he died, " On the stairs of his apartment there was the lamentation of 
the old and infirm, and the sobbing of women; poor objects of his 
charity, to whom he had never turned a deaf ear, even when struggling 
himself with poverty" (Irving's Life, Chapter XLIV). 

328. innocence distrest: the abstract for the concrete. Cf. notes on 
1. 14 and 1. 248. 

330. The sensitiveness to beauty in flowers shown in the simile in 
this line links Goldsmith for%vard with the next generation of poets. 

338. participate her pain : another phrase exactly in the eighteenth 
century manner. 

344. Altama: properly the Altamaha (pronounced with accent on 
the last syllable), a river in Georgia. The latter was much heard of in 
Goldsmith's day through the colony of Georgia, for which the poet's 
friend. General Oglethorpe, had secured letters patent in 1732. The 
colony was started as an asyluij\ for the oppressed, and was prospering 



NOTES 45 

when Goldsmith wrote. The charter is reprinted in A Narrative of the 
Colony of Georgia in America, by P. Tailfer and Others, London, 1741 ; 
or in American Colojiial Tracts, G. P. Humphrey, Rochester, New York, 
No. 2, 1897. One sentence reads: "And his Majesty farther grants all 
his lands between the rivers Savannah and Alatamaha." 

The more or less conventional new-world description (11. 343-358) is 
a good picture of a tropical scene, but it is more like South America 
than like Georgia. Thomson, whose Liberty Goldsmith often quotes, 
gives (V, 638-646) a much brighter picture of the Georgia colony. 

355. tigers: there are no tigers in Georgia. The jaguar and the 
puma are the American tigers (Rolfe). 

359-362. Here begins another of the strong contrasts of the poem. 
Dr. Tupper points out that a similar contrast between tropical scenes 
and the peaceful lawns of England is found in Thomson's Liberty, 
V, 32 ff. 

363. parting : cf. note on 1. 4. 

378. a father's: the first edition, altered in the fourth, read, '■'■her 
father's." 

380. cot : cf. note on 1. 10. 

384. silent manliness : the first edition, altered in the fourth, read, 
" in all the decent manliness." Dr. Tupper notes that De Foe has the 
same idea in h.\s, fonrftal of the Plagne Year (1722): ""He mourned 
heartily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind of masculine grief that 
could not give itself vent by tears." 

386. things like these : referring to the simplicity and happiness of 
country life, one of the main themes of the poem. It may be noted 
that Burns expresses a sentiment parallel with that of 11. 85-94 in The 
Cotter's Saturday Night, 11. 176-180. 

392. bloated mass, etc. : for the origin of this metaphor, cf. The Citi- 
zen of the World, Letter XXV: 

. . . they still, however, preserved the insolence of wealth without a power to 
support it, and persevered in being luxurious while contemptible from poverty. 
In short the state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose 
bulk is only a symptom of its wretchedness. 

399. anchoring: lying at anchor. 

402. shore . . . strand : the poet seems to make a distinction, mean- 
ing by strand the fringe of shore immediately next the sea. 

409. degenerate times : this was not, in truth, a fertile period in 
English poetry. Cf. Introduction, p. xi. 



46 NOTES 

412. solitary pride : my pride when alone. Goldsmith liked to write 
verse, but complained that he did not find it profitable. Cf. Introduc- 
tion, p. xxii. He wrote to his brother in 1759: 

Poetry is a much easier and more agreeable species of composition than prose, 
and could a man live by it, it were no unpleasant employment to be a poet. 

418. Tomo : the river Tornea or Torneo, between northern Sweden 
and Russia, flows into the Gulf of Bothnia. Goldsmith is referring to 
this rather than to Lake Tornea in northern Sweden. Le Curietix Anti- 
quairCy ou Recueil^ Geographique et Histoirique, par P. L. Berkenmeyer, 
Leyden, 1729, probably the Geographie Curietise to which Goldsmith 
referred Reverend J. Granger for the solution of " Luke's iron crown," 
The Traveller, 1. 436 (see Granger's Letters, 1805, p. 52), says (Chapter 
XIX, p. 594) concerning Torneo: "Torne, Torna, petite ville de la Both- 
nie, sur le bord Septentrional du Golfe de ce nom, a I'embouchure de la 
Torne . . ." It is more likely, however, that the name was suggested to 
Goldsmith by the operations of the French philosopher, M. de Mauper- 
tuis, in the Arctic regions. See his book. The Figure of the Earth, 
determined from Observations, made by Order of the French King at the 
Polar Circle, London, 1738. Tornea is often mentioned throughout the 
book, as in the table of contents, — " Observations of Arcturus, and 
of the Pole star, at Tomea," " Height of the Pole at Tornea," etc. — 
Pambamarca : one of the summits of the Andes near Quito in Ecuador. 
It is not entered in ordinary geographies. Goldsmith seems to select 
Tomea and Pambamarca as extremes, representing the Arctic and the 
equatorial regions. Undoubtedly he derived the suggestion of the name 
from A Voyage to South America, by Don George Juan and Don Antonio 
de Ulloa, trans., London, 1760. Cf. "Eastward it [the plain] is defended 
by the lofty Cordillera of Guamani and Pambamarca, and westward by 
that of Pinchincha" (p. 219). See also p. 229. Later in the book is 
described a signal erected on Pambamarca. 

419, equinoctial fervours : torrid or equatorial heat. Another phrase 
in the characteristic eighteenth century poetic manner. Day and night 
are of about equal length when the sun crosses the equator, i.e. about 
March 21 and September 23. 

422. Redress: make amends for. 

425. of: construed with /^jj^j-A 

428. laboured mole: a pier or breakwater. The last four lines of the 
poem, as Boswell tells us, were written by Dr. Johnson (Boswell's Life. 
Chapter XV). They are in a stiffer manner than Goldsmith's. 



NOTES ON THE ELEGY IN A 
COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 

1. curfew : from the French cotivre ■\- feti, cover-fire. A bell rung every 
evening ; originally, when introduced after the Norman Conquest, as a 
signal that all household fires be extinguished for the night. — parting : 
departing. Cf. note on The Deserted Village^ 1. 4. 

2. wind: the original MS. has wind, often changed, somewhat ill 
advisedly, by editors, to poinds. Undoubtedly it is the slow-moving line 
of individual cattle, not their mass, which the poet has in mind. As 
Dr. Rolfe says, the poet sees, not it, but them. 

5-8. Note in these lines how the stillness is intensified. What words 
are onomatopoetic ? 

Possibly Gray derived suggestion for this stanza from the third 
stanza of Collins's Ode to Evening, published in 1747 : 

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat 
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing ; 

Or where the beetle winds 

His small but sullen horn. 

11. wand'ring: many words which are to-day trisyllabic in careful 
speech were dissyllabic in eighteenth-century pronunciation, as shown 
by the meter of the poems. Note mouldWing, 1. 14; twittering, 1. 18; 
ATeni'ry, 1. 38; FlattWy, 1. 44; list''ning, 1. 61 ; hisVry, 1. 64; ling''i-ing, 
1. 88; MuttVing, 1. 106 ; favorite, 1. no. The middle syllable has now 
been restored in these words through the influence, on lexicographers and 
speakers, of the written forms. — bow'r : in the original sense of chamber. 

12. reign : used here perhaps in the older sense of kingdom or realm. 

13. elms . . . yew-tree: familiar trees in English churchyards. Pro- 
fessor Hales thinks that as the poet stands in the churchyard he 
thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred 
inside the church, mainly for two reasons : (i) the interior of the church 
was regarded as of greater sanctity, and all who could sought a place 
in it ; (2) when elaborate tombs were built, they were built inside the 
church, for the sake of security. As these two considerations ceased 

47 



48 NOTES 

to have power, the inside of the church became comparatively deserted, 
except where ancestral reasons gave no choice. 

16. rude: ignorant, untaught. 

20. shall : what difference had will been used here ? — lowly bed : is 
this to be taken literally, or does it refer to the narroiu cell of the 
preceding stanza ? 

22. ply her evening care : typical eighteenth-century poetic language, 
substituting the general or abstract for the specific household task or 
tasks which the poet had in mind. 

26. glebe : soil or turf. — broke: obsolete form of the past partici- 
ple, surviving to-day only in dialect or in colloquial speech, as do so many 
archaic forms and usages. Cf. his7i^ right as an adverb, etc. 

29. Ambition: Gray, like Goldsmith, is fond of using these person- 
ified abstractions, so in vogue in the eighteenth century but disliked in 
the poetry of the next period. Other cases in the Elegy are Gj-andetir, 
1. 31 ; beauty, wealth, 1. 34; Hojiour, 1. 43; Flatfry^ 1. 44; Ktunuledge, 
1. 49; Penury, 1. 51 ; Luxury, Pride, 1. 71 ; Forgetfulness, 1. 85; Co7i- 
templation, 1. 95 ; and the instances in the Epitaph. 

30. obscure : not an exact rhyme with/(?(?r of the last line of the stanza. 
33. boast of heraldry: pride of high birth. Heraldry is the art or 

science of recording genealogies. 

35. Awaits: hour is the subject, not the object, of azvaits. Many 
editors unnecessarily change this verb to await. 

37. fault: for explanation, see the stanza, 11. 49-52. 

39. fretted vault : the arched roof of the church, ornamented with 
fretwork. 

41. storied: an urn on which is carved an epitaph, or "story." Cf. 
" storied windows," Milton's /I Penseroso, 1. 159. — animated: lifelike. 

42. mansion : used here in the root sense of the place where one resides. 

43. provoke: call forth. 'Ldiim pro -\- vocare. 

47-48. Some of those buried here had perhaps the native ability to 
have been kings or poets. 

50. unroll: early books were rolls of parchment. Compare the word 
volume, from the Latin volutnen, a roll. In legal phraseology the term 
remains synonymous with books. Cf. Parliat?ieutary Polls. The modern 
book form rests on the tablet form, adopted because, since it enabled 
both sides of the page to be used, it was the less expensive as well as 
the more compact form. 

61. rage : often used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in 
the sense of inspiration, enthusiasm. 



NOTES 49 

52. genial : a favorite epithet in the eighteenth century. 

53. ray serene : a Miltonic word order. Milton often followed a noun 
by its epithet, now a standard poetic inversion. 

What relation has the stanza, 11. 53-56, to the preceding ? 
57. Hampden: in 1636 John Hampden, a cousin of Cromwell, re- 
fused to pay the ship-money tax which was levied illegally by Charles I. 

60. Cromwell: Gray shared the eighteenth-century prejudice against 
Cromwell. The latter's character and purposes were much misunder- 
stood until considerably later. 

In the original form of the poem, Gray had Tully (Cicero) and 
Caesar instead of Milton and Cromwell. Why did he change ? 

61. The great age of Parliamentary oratory was just dawning when 
the Elegy was published. The elder Pitt was already famous for his 
eloquence (Hales). 

What is the main predicate of the stanza, 11. 61-64 ? 

63. As Walpole's long, peaceful administration had done (Hales). 

66. growing virtues : the growth of their virtues. 

67. See the reference to Cromwell, 1. 60. 

71-72. A reference to the patronage system, from which professional 
writers were breaking away in the days of Gray and Goldsmith. Cf. 
Introduction to The Deserted Village, pp. xi-xii. 

At this point, in Gray's first MS., followed these four stanzas, with 
which the Elegy was to have ended : 

The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow, 

Exalt the brave and idolize success ; 
But more to innocence their safety owe, 

Than Pow'r, or Genius, e'er conspir'd to bless. 

And thou, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead, 
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 

By night and lonely contemplation led 
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate : 

Hark! how the sacred Calm that breathes around, 
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease; 

In still small accents whispering from the ground, 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 

No more, with reason and thyself at strife, 
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room ; 

But through the cool sequestered vale of life 
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom. 



50 NOTES 

73. madding : raging, distracted. Dr. Johnson speaks of " the madded 
land," Vanity of Human Wishes, 1. 30. 

Does the first line of the stanza modify ^uishes of the next line, or 
stray, i.e. into forbidden paths ? 

75. Explain the meaning. 

77. The preceding stanzas, 11. 13-76, really constitute the poet's 
elegy proper over those buried in the churchyard. — these bones: the 
bones of these. 

78. still: always, as in Shakespeare. 

79. rhimes : the better and historic spelling is rimes (O. E. rim, 
number). The perverted spellings, r/z/w*?, rhyme, or ryme, are due to the 
influence of rhythm, from the Greek. 

81. unletter'd Muse: the rude verse of some rustic poet. Cf. also 
1. 72. The terms Muse, Aliises, so in vogue in English poetry after the 
period of the classical renaissance as eventually to become hackneyed, 
have now dropped almost entirely out of use. 

82. The eighteenth century was much given to elaborate epitaph 
and elegy writing. The funereal literature of the period is very great. 
Cf. the works of Pope, Goldsmith, Watts, and many minor poets. 
Poetic epitaphs have grown much less common, although still found 
sometimes in country places. 

84. teach : Mitford thinks that Gray originally wrote " to teach," but 
altered it afterward for the sake of euphony, making the grammatical 
correctness give way to sound. 

85. a prey: is this phrase the appositive to -oho, or does it complete 
the predicate resign\i1 

Dr. Johnson especially liked the stanza, 11. S5-S8. Why ? 

89. This stanza gives the poet's answer to the questions of the pre- 
ceding. Hales suggests that the answers in its four lines form a climax, 
picturing (i) the near approach of death ; (2) its actual advent ; (3) the 
time immediately succeeding that advent ; (4) a still later time. The 
desire of loving remembrance persists even when all is dust and ashes. 

90. pious : used in the sense of the Latin pius, i.e. prompted by 
affection and devotion. 

92. wonted fires : meaning ? Historically, wonted \s a double past par- 
ticiple. The old verb luofie (O.E. wioiian, Ger. wohnen) had for its past 
participle woned, giving wont, as in ivas wont. In wonted the -ed suffix 
has been added twice over. 

93. For thee: i.e. for Gray himself. The poet imagines himself 
buried, like those over whom the Elegy w'as pronounced, in a country 



NOTES 51 

churchyard. Next to the author's personal approach to his subject in the 
opening stanzas, it is probably this picture, drawn not without touches 
akin to humor, of the poet as he might have appeared to the chance 
observer, which is remembered most distinctly by the average reader. 

95. chance : perchance. 

97. swain: see note on The Desej'ted Village^ 1. 2. 
101. The first draught of the poem had this stanza as follows: 

Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 
While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, 

Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song, 
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun. 

105. Hard by: an idiomatic use of hard. So Tennyson's " Hard on 
the river," Lancelot and Elaitie, 1. 75. Cf. also close by-, fast by. 
111. Another: i.e. morning. 

115. read : the ability to read was not so common in the eighteenth 
century that it could be taken for granted. — lay : is this word wholly 
appropriate as referring to an epitaph ? 

116. Here was originally inserted the following stanza, which Gray 

afterward cut out because he thought it too long a parenthesis in this 

place : 

There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the 3^ear, 

By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found ; 

The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 

And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 

The epitaph that follows applies in spirit, though not literally per- 
haps, to the poet himself, in his assumed character as writer of the 
elegy. In any case the poet seems to have been thinking of himself in 
these lines. 

119. Science: knowledge, learning. — frowned not : i.e. smiled. 

Sir Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, IH, finds that the Elegy 
flags slightly toward the end. He thinks that some of the remarks of 
the " hoary-headed swain," and the Epitaph, lapse a little from the high 
level of the earlier stanzas. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 
CHARACTER OF THE POOR PARSON 

FROM 

Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales 

A good man was ther of religioun, 
And was a povre PERSOUN of a toun ; 
But riche he was of holy thoght and werk. 
He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 

That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche ; 5 

His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche. 
Benygne he was, and wonder diligent, 
And in adversitee ful pacient; 
And swich he was y-preved ofte sithes. 

Ful looth were hym to cursen for his tithes, 10 

But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, 
Unto his povre parisshens aboute 
Of his offryng, and eek of his substaunce. 
He coude in htel thyng han suffisaunce. 

Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder, 15 

But he ne lafte nat, for reyn ne thonder, 
In siknes nor in meschief to visite 
The ferreste in his parisshe, moche and lite. 
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. 

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, 20 

That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte ; 
Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte ; 
And this figure he added eek therto, 
That if gold ruste, what shal yren do? 

For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, 25 

No wonder is a lewed man to ruste ; 
And shame it is, if a preest take keep, 

55 



56 APPENDIX 

A shiten shepherde and a clene sheep. 

Wei oghte a preest ensample for to yive, 

By his clennesse, how that his sheep shold live. 30 

He sette nat his benefice to hyre, 

And leet his sheep encombred in the myre, 

And ran to London, unto seynte Poules, 

To seken hym a chaunterie for soules, 

Or with a bretherhed to been withholde ; 35 

But dwelte at hoom, and kepte wel his folde, 

So that the wolf ne made it nat myscarie ; 

He was a shepherde and no mercenarie. 

And though he holy were, and vertuous, 

He was to synful man nat despitous, 40 

Ne of his speche daungerous ne digne, 

But in his techyng discreet and benygne. 

To drawen folk to heven by fairnesse 

By good ensample, this was his bisynesse : 

But it were any persone obstynat, 45 

What so he were, of heigh or low estat, 

Hym wolde he snybben sharply for the nonys. 

A bettre preest, I trowe that nowher non is. 

He wayted after no pompe and reverence, 

Ne maked him a spiced conscience, 50 

But Cristes lore, and his apostles' twelve, 

He taughte, but first he folwed it hymselve. 



THE CHARACTER OF A GOOD PARSON 

FROM 

Dryden's Tales from Chaucer 

A parish priest was of the pilgrim train ; 
An awful, reverend, and religious man, 
His eyes diffused a venerable grace. 
And charity itself was in his face. 
Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor ; 
(As God had clothed his own ambassador ;) 
For such, on earth, his bless'd Redeemer bore. 



APPENDIX 



57 



Of sixty years he seem'd ; and well might last 

To sixty more, but that he lived too fast ; 

Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense ; i o 

And made almost a sin of abstinence. 

Yet had his aspect nothing of severe. 

But such a face as promised him sincere. 

Nothing reserved or sullen was to see : 

But sweet regards ; and pleasing sanctity : 15 

Mild was his accent, and his action free. 

With eloquence innate his tongue was arm'd ; 

Though harsh the precept, yet the preacher charm'd. 

For letting down the golden chain from high, 

He drew his audience upward to the sky ; 20 

And oft, with holy hymns, he charm'd their ears : 

(A music more melodious than the spheres:) 

For David left him, when he went to rest, 

His lyre ; and after him he sung the best. 

He bore his great commission in his look : 25 

But sweetly temper'd awe ; and soften'd all he spoke. 

He preach'd the joys of heaven, and pains of hell ; 

And warn'd the sinner with becoming zeal ; 

But on eternal mercy loved to dwell. 

He taught the gospel rather than the law ; 30 

And forced himself to drive ; but loved to draw. 

For fear but freezes minds ; though love, like heat. 

Exhales the soul sublime, to seek her native seat. 

To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard ; 
Wrapp'd in his crimes, against the storm prepared ; 35 

But, when the milder beams of mercy play, 
He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away. 
Lightning and thunder (heaven's artillery) 
As harbingers before the Almighty fly : 

Those but proclaim his style, and disappear ; 40 

The stiller sound succeeds, and God is there. 

The tithes, his parish freely paid, he took; 
But never sued, or cursed with bell and book. 
With patience bearing wrong ; but offering none ; 



58 APPENDIX 

Since every man is free to lose his own. 45 

The country churls, according to their kind, 
(Who grudge their dues, and love to be behind,) 
The less he sought his offerings, pinch'd the more, 
And praised a priest contented to be poor. 

Yet of his little he had some to spare, 50 

To feed the famish'd, and to clothe the bare: 
For mortified he was to that degree, 
A poorer than himself he would not see. 
True priests, he said, and preachers of the word, 
Were only stewards of their sovereign Lord ; 5 5 

Nothing was theirs ; but all the public store : 
Intrusted riches, to relieve the poor ; 
Who, should they steal, for want of his relief. 
He judged himself the accomplice with the thief. 

Wide was his parish ; not contracted close 60 

In streets, but here and there a straggling house ; 
Yet still he was at hand, without request, 
To serve the sick, to succour the distress'd ; 
Tempting, on foot, alone, without affright, 
Ihe dangers of a dark tempestuous night. 65 

All this the good old man perform'd alone. 
Nor spared his pains ; for curate he had none. 
Nor durst he trust another with his care ; 
Nor rode himself to Paul's, the public fair. 
To chaffer for preferment with his gold, 70 

Where bishoprics and sinecures are sold ; 
But duly watch 'd his flock by night and day. 
And from the prowling wolf redeem'd the prey, 
And hungry sent the wily fox away. 

The proud he tamed, the penitent he cheer'd ; 75 

Nor to rebuke the rich offender fear'd. 
His preaching much, but more his practice wrought : 
For this by rules severe his life he squared : 
That all might see the doctrine which they heard. 



APPENDIX 



59 



For priests, he said, are patterns for the rest : 80 

(The gold of heaven, who bear the God impress'd :) 

But when the precious coin is kept unclean, 

The sovereign's image is no longer seen. 1 

If they be foul on whom the people trust, 

Well may the baser brass contract a rust. 85 

The prelate, for his holy life he prized ; 
The worldly pomp of prelacy despised, 
His Saviour came not with a gaudy show ; 
Nor was his kingdom of the world below. 

Patience in want, and poverty of mind, 90 

These marks of Church and Churchmen he design'd. 
And living taught, and dying left behind. 
The crown he wore was of the pointed thorn : 
In purple he was crucified, not born. 

They who contend for place and high degree, 95 

Are not his sons, but those of Zebedee. 

Not but he knew the signs of earthly power 
Might well become Saint Peter's successor; 
The holy father holds a double reign, 
The prince may keep his pomp, the fisher must be plain. 100 

Such was the saint; who shone with every grace, 
Reflecting, Moses-like, his Maker's face. 
God saw his image lively was express'd ; 
And his own work, as in creation, bless'd. 

The tempter saw him too with envious eye ; 105 

And, as on Job, demanded leave to try. 
He took the time when Richard was deposed. 
And high and low with happy Harry closed. 
This prince, though great in arms, the priest withstood ; 
Near though he was, yet not the next of blood. no 

Had Richard, unconstrain'd resign'd the throne, 
A king can give no more than is his own ; 
The title stood entail'd, had Richard had a son. 



66 APPENDIX 

Conquest, an odious name, was laid aside, 
Where all submitted, none the battle tried. 115 

The senseless plea of right by providence 
Was, by a flattering priest, invented since ; 
And lasts no longer than the present sway; 
But justifies the next who comes in play. 

The people's right remains ; let those who dare 120 

Dispute their power, when they the judges are. 

He join'd not in their choice, because he knew 
Worse might, and often did, from change ensue. 
Much to himself he thought ; but little spoke ; 
And undeprived, his benefice forsook. 125 

Now, through the land, his cure of souls he stretch'd ; 
And hke a primitive apostle preach'd. 
Still cheerful, ever constant to his call. 
By many follow'd, loved by most, admired by all. 
With what he begg'd, his brethren he relieved, 130 

And gave the charities himself received. 
Gave while he taught, and edified the more, 
Because he showed by proof, 'twas easy to be poor. 

He went not with the crowd to see a shrine ; 
But fed us, by the way, with food divine. 135 

In deference to his virtues, I forbear 
To show you what the rest in orders were : 
This brilhant is so spotless and so bright. 
He needs no foil, but shines by his own proper light. 



DESCRIPTION OF STOKE POGES ^ 

... It is, however, at Stoke-Pogis that we seek the most attractive 
vestiges of Gray. Here he used to spend his vacations, not only 
when a youth at Eton, but during the whole of his future life, while 
his mother and his aunts lived. Here it was that his Ode on a Dis- 
tant Prospect of Eton College^ his celebrated Elegy Written in a 
Country Churchyard^ and his Long Story ^ were not only written but 
were mingled with the circumstances, and all the tenderest feelings 
of his own life. 

His mother and aunts lived at an old-fashioned house in a very 
retired spot at Stoke, called West End. This house stood in a hollow, 
much screened by trees. A small stream ran through the garden, and 
it is said that Gray used to employ himself when here much in this 
garden, and that many of the trees still remaining are of his planting. 
On one side of the house extended an upland field, which was planted 
round so as to give a charming, retired walk ; and at the summit of 
the field was raised an artificial mound, and upon it was built a sort 
of arcade or summer-house, which gave full prospect of Windsor and 
Eton, Here Gray used to delight to sit ; here he was accustomed to 
read and write much ; and it is just the place to inspire the Ode on 
Eton College^ which lay in the midst of its fine landscape, beautifully 
in view. The old house inhabited by Gray and his mother has . . . 
been pulled down, and replaced by an Elizabethan mansion. . . . The 
garden, of course, has shared in the change, and now stands gay with 
its fountain and its modern green-house, and, excepting for some fine 
trees, no longer reminds you of Gray. 

The woodland walk still remains round the adjoining field, and the 
summer-house on its summit, though now much cracked by time, and 
only held together by iron cramps. The trees are now so lofty that they 
completelyobstructthe view, and shut out both Eton and Windsor. . . . 

1 From William Hewitt's Homes of the Poets (1S46). 
61 



62 APPENDIX 

. . . The Manor-house, Stoke Park, . . . was then in the possession 
of Viscountess Cobham. This place and the manor had been in 
some remarkable hands. The manor was so called from the Pogies, 
the ancient lords of that name. The heiress of this family, in the 
reign of Edward the Third, married Lord Molines, who shortly 
afterward procured a license from the king to convert the manor- 
house into a castle. From him it descended to the Lords Hunger- 
ford, and from them to the Hastings, earls of Huntingdon, and was 
afterward the residence of Lord-Chancellor Hatton. Sir Christopher 
Hatton had won his promotion with Queen Elizabeth through his 
graceful person and fine dancing, and is very picturesquely described 
by Gray, with " his shoe-strings green, high -crowned hat, and satin 
doublet," leading off the brawls, a sort of figure-dance then in vogue, 
before the queen. Sir Edward Coke, having married an heiress of 
the Huntingdon family, became the next possessor ; and here, in the 
year 1601, he was honored with a visit from Elizabeth, whom he 
entertained in a very sumptuous style. After the death of Viscountess 
Cobham, the estate was purchased by Mr. William Penn, chief pro- 
prietor of Pennsylvania, and descendant of the celebrated William 
Penn, the founder of that state. 

This old manor-house has since been swept away, as Gray's resi- 
dence is also, and a large modern mansion now occupies its place. 
This was built from a design by Wyatt, in 1 789, and has since been 
altered and enlarged. It is built chiefly of brick, and covered with 
stucco, and consists of a large square center, with two wings. The 
north, or entrance front, is ornamented with a colonnade, consisting 
of ten Doric columns, and approached by a flight of steps leading to 
the Marble Hall. The south front, 196 feet long, is also adorned 
with a colonnade, consisting of twelve fluted columns, of the old 
Doric order. This is surrounded by a projecting portico of four Ionic 
columns, sustaining an ornamental pediment ; and again, on the top 
of the house, by a dome. 

Stoke Park, thus interesting both on account of these older asso- 
ciations, and of Penn and Gray, is about a couple of miles from 
Slough. The country is flat, but its monotony is broken up by the 
noble character and disposition of its woods. Near the house is a 



APPENDIX 63 

fine expanse of water, across which the eye falls on fine views, par- 
ticularly to the south, of Windsor Castle, Cooper's Hill, and the 
Forest Woods. About three hundred yards from the north front of 
the house stands a column, sixty-eight feet high, bearing on the top a 
colossal statue of Sir Edward Coke, by Rosa. The woods of the park 
shut out the view of West End House, Gray's occasional residence, 
but the space is open from the mansion across the park, so as to take 
in the view both of the church and of a monument erected by the 
late Mr. Penn to Gray. Alighting from the carriage at a lodge, 
I entered the park just at the monument. This is composed of 
fine freestone, and consists of a large sarcophagus, supported on a 
square pedestal, with inscriptions on each side. Three of them are 
selected from the Ode to Eton College and the Elegy. . . . The 
fourth bears this inscription : 

This Monument, in honor of 

THOMAS GRAY, 

Was erected A.D. 1799, 

Among the scenery 

Celebrated by that great Lyric and Elegiac Poet. 

He died in 1771, 

And lies unnoted in the adjoining Church-yard, 

Under the Tomb-stone on which he piously 

And pathetically recorded the interment 

Of his Aunt and lamented Mother. 

This monument is enclosed in a neatly-kept garden-like inclosure, 
with a winding walk approaching from the shade of the neighboring 
trees. To the right, across the park, at some little distance, backed 
by fine trees, stands the rural little church and churchyard where 
Gray wrote his Elegy, and where he lies. As you walk on to this, the 
mansion closes the distant view between the woods with fine effect. 
The church has often been engraved, and is therefore tolerably 
familiar to the general reader. It consists of two barn-like structures, 
with tall roofs, set side by side, and the tower and finely tapered spire 
rising above them at the northwest corner. The church is thickly 
hung with ivy, where 

The moping owl may to the moon complain. . . . 



64 APPENDIX 

The structure is as simple and old-fashioned, both without and 
within, as any village church can well be. No village, however, is to 
be seen. Stoke consists chiefly of scattered houses, and this is now 
in the midst of the park. In the churchyard, 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

All this is quite literal ; and the tomb of the poet himself, near the 
southeast window, completes the impression of the scene. It is a 
plain brick altar tomb, covered with a blue slate slab, and, besides 
his own ashes, contains those of his mother and aunt. On the slab 
are inscribed the following lines by Gray himself: "In the vault 
beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains 
of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty- 
six. In the same pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here 
sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow ; the tender, careful mother 
of many children, ONE of whom alone had the misfortune to survive 
her. She died, March 11, 1753, aged sixty-seven." 

No testimony of the interment of Gray in the same tomb was in- 
scribed anywhere till Mr. Penn, in 1799, erected the monument 
already mentioned, and placed a small slab in the wall, under the 
window, opposite to the tomb itself, recording the fact of Gray's 
burial there. The whole scene is well worthy of a summer day's 
stroll, especially for such as, pent in the metropolis, know how to 
enjoy the quiet freshness of the country, and the associations of 
poetry and the past. The . . . railway now will set such down in 
about one hour at Slough, a pleasant walk from Stoke. 

The late Mr. Penn, a gentleman of refined taste, and a great 
reverencer of the memory of Gray, possessed his autographs, which 
have been sold at great prices. It is to be regretted that his house, 
too, is now gone, but the church and the tomb will remain to future 
ages. 



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